The Wiltshire Space Station
by Colubrina
Summary: Hermione Granger agrees to go undercover to Voldemort Inc. as one of their unskilled grunts to get to the Wiltshire Space Station and look for proof of the company's malfeasance. When she manipulates her way into teaching the Station Executive's son, Draco Malfoy, how to survive planetside, she learns more than she bargained for. Non-Magical SFF AU. ABANDONED.
1. Chapter 1

Hermione reached up and tucked some of her sweaty hair back into the regulation cap. The ventilation was on the fritz in this section of the station again, and it was ungodly hot. Sweat trickled down her neck with a teasing itch she wasn't allowed to wipe at. Her knees hurt from kneeling on the metal floor. Her back ached from bending over.

"Keep working," snapped a voice from above her. "Unless you want to skip your next water break to make up for the lost time."

It was Dolohov today. He was her least favorite among the DEs. More intelligent than most, and more brutal as well. "What does DE stand for?" she'd asked him her first day here. That had earned her a zap from his wand.

"It stands for don't inquire" he'd said with a laugh, then kicked her where she lay on the floor, curled around the misery of that zap. Everyone curled into a ball after a wand strike. It was as if they hoped making themselves as small as possible would make the suffering less.

It didn't.

Even with all the pain she'd been in, Hermione'd thought, _you spell 'inquire' with an I_. At least she'd had the presence of mind not to blurt that out. They were a sadistic lot, the DEs, and she'd certainly been warned. She hadn't quite believed it, though, despite all the files and vids and warnings. "I'm sure I can manage," she'd said confidently when Dumbledore asked one last time whether she could handle an undercover assignment.

It wasn't as if Voldemort Inc. used skilled labor. The labor was, in fact, so unskilled they generally had no idea they'd volunteered for space station work until they woke with a DE standing over them and welcoming them to their new home. "For the rest of your life," the one who'd zapped her into wakefulness said with a laugh. It hadn't taken a lot of acting to huddle away from him or begin to cry. Even now, two months into her three-month assignment, Hermione sometimes cried herself to sleep at night. It was the exhaustion, she told herself. Or maybe the frustration she learning a hell of a lot about second stage space station construction but not a damn thing about how Voldemort Inc. was laundering money. Grunt labor never got the chance to wander unsupervised through any of the corridors, much less through ones that lead to intel. She couldn't think of a lot of things she dreaded more than sitting back at Order headquarters and confessing she'd utterly failed.

Well, she could think of one thing. Not getting pulled out of this hell hole at all.

"But I don't want to have to go to school on the surface." Hermione recognized the petulant whine at once. Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy, one of the chief stakeholders in Voldemort Inc. and supervisor for the construction of Wiltshire Station. None of the workers cared for young Draco.

Like Hermione, most of the kidnapping victims who ended up here were in their late teens. The Order speculated Voldemort was targeting that age because runaways were easier to snatch up and fewer people missed them but they were still strong enough to work. Seeing a boy who had everything sashay past them, complaining his data connection was too slow or that he hadn't like the cake at dinner filled the work gangs with a special kind of loathing.

Draco Malfoy seemed oblivious he was walking through a gang of people who'd happily beat him to a bloody pulp if not murder him outright.

"The gravity is too heavy there," his whining went on. "I don't see why I have to go. Why can't I just keep working with tutors the way I have been?"

"You cannot," came the cultured voice of his mother. Narcissa Malfoy, age forty-one, no known allergies, at least according to the preparation Hermione had done planetside. She'd been born to money and was as distant from the bent over children trying not to be noticed as a person could be.

Being noticed was bad. Being noticed brought the attention of the DEs and their wands. Wands brought nothing but pain.

As the pair of aristocrats strolled along the walkway, the workers around Hermione bent over and worked even more assiduously. _I'm nothing but another cog in the wheel of your empire_, their bent spines might as well have said_. I'm working hard. I'm good. Don't see me. _

But being noticed might get Hermione closer to something she could bring back with her. Something that would keep her from failure.

She lifted her head and sneered at the spoiled brat as he approached. He was pale and wispy the way most station dwellers were. No sun. Gravity a bit low. It made him seem fey and delicate, and her planetborn body thick and slow by comparison.

God, she hated these people.

"What are you looking at?" Draco demanded when he caught sight of her upturned face. "Stupid mudblood."

"Language, Draco," his mother admonished. She glanced down at Hermione, and her mouth moved into a moue of distaste. Under that cool appraisal, Hermione flushed. Labor was permitted one sonic shower per week, and it wasn't enough to keep you anything close to clean. Sometimes, at night, she fantasized about taking a long water shower when she got back. Narcissa Malfoy didn't look as if she were restricted to the sonics, and neither did her son. It was one more way she looked beneath them. Coarse. Heavy. Dirty,

"They're going to eat you alive on the surface," Hermione said. She didn't bother to hide the satisfaction in her voice. Looking at their contemptuous expressions, she reveled in the knowledge that station brats were almost universally despised planetside. She wanted Narcissa Malfoy to hear her speak, but combining that with her real opinion felt very satisfying, so she added one more word. "Spacer."

One of the DEs raised his wand and pointed it at her. "You mind your mouth when talking to your betters, girl," he said. He probably would have zapped her, but Narcissa Malfoy raised a hand to stop him.

"No one grabbed you out of the slums," she observed. Her eyes slid up and down Hermione's sweat-soaked body. "Not that one can tell by looking. Where are you from?"

"Why don't you check the records?" Hermione said with all the arrogance and contempt one would expect from the most privileged of teens. She half-expected an immediate zap for that and cringed a little in anticipation. The DEs didn't tolerate mouthiness. But her ploy worked, and hearing that second sampling of Hermione's cultured accent, Narcissa Malfoy began to smile. "Public school, was it?" she asked. "How did you end up here? Addiction? Family throw you out for a pregnancy?"

"I was hitching a ride to Paris," Hermione said. That was her cover. "And when my parents find out I'm here, they're going to shut this place down."

"Likely story," sneered Draco, but his mother looked, if anything, even more smug then she had a moment before.

"What a tragedy for you," she said. "What did you say your name was?"

It was working. Oh, dear God, it was working. After two months of hot, sweaty labor without a break in sight, she might finally have a chance to spy on these monsters before her fake but very wealthy parents lit up the Transcom with shocked demands for her return. "Hermione Groton–Rees."

"Get Miss Groton-Rees cleaned up," Narcissa Malfoy ordered Dolohov. "And with a real shower too. I don't want the grime removed from her, but the stink still in place."

"Of course," he said, doing everything but touching the brim of his uniform cap in Narcissa's direction. He eyed Hermione with a new touch of wariness in his mean blue eyes. If she were a rich girl, he might be in trouble. You couldn't exploit children of the wealthy the same way you could runaways and orphans. There were different rules for the sorts of people with hyphens in their names. Classist nonsense ran so deeply in his soul, he probably hadn't considered she might be a person the same way he was until this moment. Hermione curled her lip with genuine disgust.

"What are you doing, mother," Draco demanded.

"There will undoubtedly be a small amount of culture shock when you arrive at Hogwarts," Narcissa said calmly. "Miss Groton-Rees will do her best to fill you in on the differences between life on a station and life planetside, and that will make your transition easier. When she's done, I will, of course, send her back to her parents with our deepest apologies she was temporarily waylaid here."

"What if I don't want to help your little brat?" Hermione asked.

"Computer records disappear every day," Narcissa Malfoy said. "And I understand a lifetime of manual labor is good for the soul."

Real fear of that possibility froze Hermione. Narcissa saw the reaction and smiled. "Excellent," she said in a soft voice. "We understand one another." She swept away in a flurry of expensive, natural fabrics, Draco at her heels. He didn't look back, though Hermione glared at his pale head until it disappeared around a corner.

Then she stood up. She'd been kneeling at Narcissa Malfoy's feet for the entirety of their conversation, and that rankled more than a little. "Well," she said to Dolohov. "I want that shower." When he didn't move, she added, "Now."

#

The shower the DEs settled on taking her to was in their own locker room. It stank of stale sweat and not enough air, and the closest she got to any pretense as privacy was a frosted panel between her and the waiting guard. It would have to do. Something black was growing on one corner of the shower floor, and the water was tepid. But there was water and soap. Hermione washed her hair and her body and wished she could go back in time and say that, no, she couldn't handle this. Dumbledore should send someone else.

Pity the world didn't work like that. She'd made this bed, and now she'd have to sleep in it.

"Hurry it up," Dolohov snapped. "I don't have all day to wait for you."

Hermione wrapped the inadequate synthetic towel around herself and stepped back into the main locker area, careful not to put her feet anywhere near the black mold. Her dirty uniform lay in a pile on the floor where she'd left it. Taking the time to make sure she was showered, then shoving her back into her old clothes would leave her smelling almost as bad as she had before. Dolohov seemed to come to that conclusion too. It didn't make him happy. He pressed a thumb down onto the ident embedded in his embedded forearm, then swiped it near an access port in the wall. A panel slid open to reveal a stack of clean workout wear.

DE workout wear. When Hermione picked up a teeshirt, the Voldemort snake and skull logo loomed up from the front. Great. A smaller version of the same design was printed on the shorts. She didn't want to ask Antonin Dolohov about underwear, so she went without.

The flip flops, at least, didn't come with the company logo. Her feet would be free of branding. She wished she'd had them in the shower, but she'd take them now and find some iota of, well, not gratitude. She wouldn't allow herself to feel gratitude for being treated like a human being. She'd settle for relief. She was relieved not to put her feet back into her dirty, poorly fitting uniform shoes.

Dolohov grunted when she dropped her towel and crossed her arms. "Well?" she asked.

He led her off, out of the locker area, past half a dozen closed doors, and into a turbo lift. He had to press his thumb into his ident, then swipe it over the access pad before he could enter a destination. That wasn't the worst security Hermione had ever seen, but it wasn't the best either. One DE arm and she might have the run of the place.

The cool, genderless voice that responded after Dolohov typed in where he wanted to go squashed that hope.

"You are requesting access to a secured level," it said. "Voice confirmation place."

"Antonin Dolohov," he said. "Death Eater. Madam Malfoy has requested I bring her one of the mudblood grunts."

_Death Eater? _

Well, that answered that question. Hermione couldn't say she liked the answer, but there it was. The lift door closed, the same cool voice said, "Ascending to executive residential levels," right as they began moving upward. It was a smooth ride. Clearly expensive. Not at all like the jerky machines meant for bulk freight and not people she and the other grunts were crowded into on their way from their dormitory to work.

When the lift door opened, Dolohov shoved her out and into a marble foyer with an actual chandelier overhead. "Have a nice time," he said, and before Hermione could lodge anything at all like a protest, the lift doors closed, and he disappeared.

Not that he was the sort she'd miss. It was just that he was a known evil. He was a bully, and a clever, cruel one, but nothing more. She had a feeling the Malfoys were another sort of evil altogether.

A young woman in a maid's costume right out of a theatre production came scurrying up to her. "You'll have to get changed, miss," she said. Her voice was all deference, but Hermione didn't have to listen very hard to hear the fear behind it. This girl with her crisp white cap and her ironed black dress was very afraid Hermione would refuse to do as she was told.

Hermione let herself be taken through a side corridor — no marble here — to what was clearly a servant's room. It had a narrow bed, a small toilet, and a minuscule wardrobe with three identical white dresses. They were all cotton, which made Hermione's eyes widen a bit as much as she tried to hide it. They were meek and demure and not precisely a maid's dress but hardly fashionable either. If she'd fallen into a historical romance, she'd have called them the sort of thing a poor relation wore while being a paid companion to a sickly but wealthy cousin. Neat, and clean, and high enough quality no one would mistake her for the help, but they'd never let her forget her place either.

Well, it was better than wearing clothes covered in the DE mark, though how Narcissa Malfoy had managed to have three dresses in just her size on hand was a question that would take a little exploration. The maid helped her button — button! Who used _buttons_? — the first one up.

"What's this?" Hermione touched a heavy metal cuff the girl wore on her wrist. It had a design similar to the embedded mark on the DEs. There was no escaping Voldemort, Inc. because the bastards put their logo on everything.

"You'll need one to get through most of the doors," the girl said. She pulled an identical one out of her pocket.

Hermione held her arm out. She was here to find things. Getting through doors sounded good to her. The cuff shut with a sharp click and, when Hermione ran a thumb over it, she couldn't feel any sort of release mechanism. "How do I get it off at night?" she asked.

The girl looked guilty. "You don't," she said.

"What?" Hermione asked. She tugged at the cuff, but it stayed firmly in place. It wasn't uncomfortable, and she was sure it would be useful, but she didn't like having to wear it all the time. Not being able to take it off make it a bit too much like a shackle. Like the Malfoys _owned_ her.

A month, she told herself, willing herself to stay calm. It was just a piece of functional jewelry. It was better than the filthy dungarees she'd been forced to wear as a laborer, and in a month she'd be whisked back planetside, and this would all be a memory. Better, she'd used what she learned here to destroy these people, and the maid and everyone like her would be free from their clutches

Narcissa Malfoy's cold voice came from her wrist. "You've arrived. Astoria, bring Miss Croton-Rees to Draco's schoolroom."

Hermione braced her shoulders. Time to train a spoiled brat on how not to get beat up once he got planetside. Tonight, she'd go exploring.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco Malfoy's schoolroom had a view of earth's moon, a thick carpet, and a very sullen teenaged boy slouched down on a sofa. If he ever did any work here, there was no evidence of it. No desks. No terminals. Just one pale, pointy, miserable-looking boy passing a small gold ball from one hand to the other.

Well, she wasn't all that happy to be here either.

At least his mother wasn't around. Of course, no one else was either. The maid — Astoria — had gotten her to the door then fled as quickly as possible. It was just Hermione and this rotten pseudo-aristocrat. She sat down in a chair opposite him. The taste was exquisite, even if avocado green wasn't what Hermione would have chosen. The chair was fashionable and comfortable and even a bit elegant. Charming.

"I didn't tell you you could sit."

The other occupant of the room, however, wasn't charming at all. Hermione crossed her arms and glared at him. She needed to hit the exact balance between spoilt brat and someone properly frightened she could end up stuck here forever if she didn't cooperate, which meant telling him to bugger right the fuck off was out. On the other hand, Hermione Groton-Rees was a rich girl in her own right even if Hermione Granger was not. She didn't have to be quite as deferential as poor Astoria. "I didn't ask, did I?"

"Maybe you should have."

"And maybe you should get some manners."

Draco Malfoy could summon a very cruel sneer. It made his narrow face unpleasant and threw his high cheekbones into sharp relief. If he smiled, he might have been the sort who caught her eye. As it was, she had to fight back a very childish urge to kick him in the shins. "I have excellent manners," he said. "I'm just not wasting them on a mudblood like you."

Hermione nodded as if that made perfect sense, then glanced out the small window. She'd been trapped on levels that didn't touch the outside of the station for two months. Even knowing outside was death, it was nice to be able to see something past the walls. "Lesson one," she said, keeping her voice level. "You'll find most people planetside object to that term."

"My father uses it."

"Well, your father won't be there when you're at school, surrounded by people who think you're an arse."

"I'll have friends at Hogwarts," he said. Hermione was sure of that. It was the sort of school that attracted spacers' kids. Still —

"Unless you plan to have them follow you everywhere you go, sooner or later you'll get cornered," she said. She didn't have to lie, or even act like she cared. Honesty was the best way to deceive people, and she didn't have to pretend at all how rough things would be for him outside his circle of other space brats. "No one planetside much likes spacers."

"They're just envious."

She knew from her preparation the Malfoy heir was eighteen, but if he'd ever spent time outside his father's protective sphere, she'd eat week old chips from the bottom of the bag. "Maybe," she said, though the truth was absolutely not. Ron once regaled all their friends with a very vulgar song in which each verse had a group of spacers doing increasingly improbable, thoroughly obscene things to themselves. She'd laughed until she cried. So had everyone else at their table and more than a few people at the surrounding ones. Spacers were a hated elite.

"They are," Draco said. "Some people are simply better than others."

"Well, even if they're writhing with envy, you're going to go to school with them, and unless you smarten up, you'll get that pretty nose broken."

"You think my nose is pretty?"

Christ.

Hermione steered the conversation to the ways people lived planetside. He wasn't stupid. She could see that. He did listen, and if he interrupted her more than once to attempt to use scenes from vids as examples of why she was wrong, her blatant indifference to his future well-being kept him mostly attentive. She worked hard to convey that she was here to get herself home, and he was a means to an end. If he disregarded what she had to say, well, that was his problem.

Draco Malfoy seemed oddly comfortable with being used.

They were interrupted by the arrival of dinner, brought on a rolling cart by a different maid, identically dressed to the first. Draco had what looked like a tiny portion of real meat, green vegetables, and a slice of cake. Her plate was less inspiring. Apparently, her shift to private tutor had come with an upgrade in accommodations and dress but not in food. A standard grade nutribar sat on her plate. Nice.

Draco raised a fork of green beans into his mouth and chewed as Hermione took a grim bite from her own meal. Nutribars were supposed to taste like real food. They did not. They tasted like dust and stale beer had been mixed together and allowed to harden into a dense, chewy brick. She'd been eating them for two months, and the taste remained an unhappy shock each time.

"I've never had one of those," Draco said.

Hermione was unsurprised. "They meet all a person's nutritional needs for a healthy life," she said dryly. "Pity they drain your will to live."

Draco let out an amused snort he quickly smothered. The tiny moment of shared humor evaporated when the door opened, and Narcissa Malfoy walked in, silk skirts swirling around her ankles. Hermione couldn't help but noticed she, like Draco, seemed to have neither embedded ident nor cuff. Perhaps doors were simply afraid to hold her back. In their place, Hermione would have decided opening was the better choice.

"You are still here," Narcissa observed. She didn't sound happy about it. Her nose twitched. "A second shower would not be amiss."

Hermione rose, leaving the second half of her dinner lying unwanted on the plate. "Advice I will take," she said.

"My sister wants to see you," Narcissa said. For a brief moment, Hermione thought with shock that was addressed to her. Then she realized she had already been dismissed and therefore, as far as Madam Malfoy was concerned, she'd ceased to exist.

She was at the door when Draco Malfoy said, sneer in his voice, "Be back tomorrow."

Hermione didn't bother answering. It wasn't as if she had a real choice. A wave of her arm near the door and the panel slid open with a pneumatic hiss. She retraced her steps through the Malfoy's apartment, back to the small area where the staff lived. There was a group shower, which she used. At least here the water was hot. There was a vending machine that dropped a sweet when she passed her cuff near the sensor. Synthetic chocolate and protein chips were major upgrade from what she'd had for dinner, so she grabbed a second one. Then she lay on her bed, back in the same white dress since apparently whoever had decided what she would wear hadn't bothered with any sort of nightclothes, and she waited.

Her private room was much quieter than the dorm she'd slept in as a grunt. Here all she could hear was the hiss of the ventilation. There someone had always been crying or snoring or just breathing so loudly she'd wanted to scream some nights. And, of course, punctuating all that had been the booted sounds of DEs walking through at irregular intervals. The comparative silence here offered the seductive lie that she was alone, unwatched, safe.

Which was highly unlikely to be true.

She closed her eyes and let herself drift off until she woke with a start. "Time?" she asked the air. It was a sufficiently universal prompt she expected the systems to answer. They did.

"Two hours and thirty-seven minutes past Greenwich Mean Time," the genderless voice said.

Excellent. Time to see how far her leash went. Hermione stepped outside her door into the narrow hall and waited. No one came around any corner. No heads popped out to ask if she needed anything. Everyone who came here was either asleep or working a night shift.

She turned from the hall with the staff quarters to a somewhat wider hall. Instead of the lush carpets of Draco Malfoy's schoolroom, this had an antiseptic floor and economical lights into the ceiling panels. She couldn't spot any sort of cameras, but that all meant was they were well hidden. It was fine. She wasn't expecting to break into Lucius Malfoy's private files tonight. All she wanted to do was try to get a feel for what was here.

She walked close to one wall, swinging her arm casually as she walked. Of the three doors she passed, one slid open as her wrist cuff oh-so-accidentally passed by the access plate. She jumped back as if startled by the sudden whoosh, then stuck her head cautiously in and looked around. Nothing but storage. Racks of clothes hung in wide garment bags. Narcissa Malfoy's winter wardrobe. Narcissa Malfoy's summer wardrobe. Neat boxes were similarly labeled for shoes and handbags. Hermione rolled her eyes as she stepped away. She'd never understood how some girls could care about shopping, but even the most fervent of her friends couldn't measure up to this woman. She'd been dragged around all afternoon once by Lavender and Parvati, convinced that they could make her see the pleasure of the hunt. All she'd learned was her feet gave out in flats before Lavender's did in heels.

Three more doors opened as she passed. One led to an empty room, one to a laundry facility, and one to stored linens. Cotton, Hermione noted, running a hand across one folded sheet. Did the Malfoys know how much water you needed to grow cotton? Did they care?

The answer to that was a grim probably not. Luxuries were always available to people with credits to spare. That every cotton plant grew at the expense of clean water for someone who didn't have credits wasn't likely to matter to a woman who needed an entire room to store her planetside wardrobe. She should try to slip a little awareness of his own privilege into Draco Malfoy's education. Here's how not to get beat up and, by the way, poor people exist.

She didn't have high hopes for either lesson succeeding.

The service corridor ended in a door that let her pass into the family part of the Malfoy's extensive apartment. Given how much space was at a premium on stations like this, she had to wonder just how valuable they were to Voldemort. Three feet into the wider hall with its beautifully patterned walls and sconces and the genderless voice informed her, "You have reached the limit of authorized space."

She took another careful step.

Fire blazed along all her nerves. She would have screamed at the searing pain, but nothing as active as screaming was going to happen. She had no control over her vocal cords. No control over anything. She had fallen to the floor. Was falling. Would fall forever. Carpet pressed into her cheek, and she could taste the blood in her mouth where she'd bitten at her tongue, and still, the pain went on.

"You are passed the limits of authorized space," the voice said.

She reached a hand out, pushing it against a wall of agony and curling her fingers into the carpet. It was almost impossible to get a hold on the soft, thick floor and, as she failed, the pain tried to drown her. She hadn't even known you could be drowned in flame, but you could. Oh, you could. She reached another arm out and pulled herself along the floor.

"You are passed the limits of authorized space."

Another inch. And Another. And she could do this because she wasn't going to be found here, gasping out on the Malfoy's floor like a hooked fish. Keep going. Keep reaching.

"You are passed the limits of — "

And then her arm moved beyond some unseen sensor and, as quickly as it had come, the voice cut off and the pain was gone. The echoes of it lived in her bones. Every breath made her lungs tense against the possibility of more pain. More fire. More torture.

Hermione dragged herself up and leaned against the wall. She really should go back, get behind the service door, hide. But she couldn't. Not quite yet. She needed to breathe for just a minute or two. She reached a hand up to wipe a something wet on her face, right at her nose, expecting it would be a tear. What she'd just felt would make anyone cry. When she dropped her hand back down a streak of red stained the skin. She touched at her nose again. More blood.

She hunched her shoulders over. She would not break down. She would not. Exploring at night was out. She hadn't expected to be able to stroll into Lucius Malfoy's office anyway. This was fine. She was going to stand up now. Her legs were going to support her, and she was going to go back to her room and lie down.

And she did stand up. Her legs did work. But before she turned and retraced a path that now seemed eternal and unending, she tested one thing. She braced herself against the wall and reached the uncuffed arm past the danger line in the corridor.

Nothing happened.

She reached the cuffed arm out, and as soon as the cuff passed whatever barrier existed, pain reared up.

"You are passed — "

Hermione staggered back, out of reach of the voice and the pain. She hadn't realized the zap from the DE wands could be turned up, but it could. It really, really could. Her feet took her back to the service corridor, and she leaned her forehead against the safe, plain wall. The lights were dimmer here. The air cooler. And no one important would come back here. She could catch her breath. She could move slowly.

She could overhear a peevish voice out in the family hall.

"If I had a son, Cissa, I'd be grateful he had the chance to work for Voldemort."

"He's only a boy." That was Narcissa Malfoy, but she sounded far less controlled than she had in either of Hermione's encounters with her.

"He's of age," the other speaker said. She let out a laugh that sent a chill down Hermione's spine. Goose-pimples broke out on her arms, and she had to fight the urge to run in a panicked flight down the servants' hall to get away from whoever that was. "It's an honor, Cissa. Every single one of those sad children you have wiggling their fingers into nooks and crannies building this behemoth of Lucius' would kiss your feet for an opportunity like this."

"I prefer the rabble away from my feet," Narcissa said. "And I'm sure at least one of them would have the sense to steer clear of this."

"You doubt your own son's talents?"

The lack of an immediate response would have made Hermione smile if she wasn't frozen, trying not to trigger any sudden announcements from the system. This would be a bad time to have the computer tell her all staff were required to be in their rooms at this hour. Still, Narcissa Malfoy's sigh suggested she, at least, knew Draco's talents weren't that great. She knew, and it filled her with something that sounded a lot like despair or desperation.

"You know this is to punish Lucius because he's behind schedule," she said. "Draco has no real hope in succeeding in such a thing. He'll end up in prison, and the moment he's in an Order facility, the implant will activate."

"Voldemort's secrets are of paramount importance."

"My son is of paramount importance. Bella, please. Talk to him."

The other woman laughed again. "And that's why you'll never be more than a pretty face at mindless social events, Cissa. You don't understand loyalty to Voldemort always comes first. Before family. Before dreams. Before yourself, even."

How on earth did they screen for that in the interview process? Maybe they forced people to go through some sort of virtual reality testing, and people who put the company's good ahead of their own got hired. Hermione certainly didn't plan on ever applying.

"Let's not fight," Narcissa said. "I have to be up and on a call at six."

"Yes, we wouldn't want the princess to have bags under her eyes."

"Bella, please. I'm begging you."

"No."

The no had a horrible finality to it. Hermione heard a door open and close, and footsteps fade away. She counted to ten, then did it three more times for good measure before slinking down the hall as quietly as she could and climbing back into her own bed. Into the Malfoy's bed. Whosever bed it was, she was lying in it and, before long, she was sleeping in it too.

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – Thank you CaffeinatedKiss for beta reading!**_


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione grabbed another one of the chocolate and protein bars on her way to Draco Malfoy's schoolroom in the morning. Dress number one went down a laundry chute. She assumed it would end up back in her wardrobe by the time she'd finished her day's task of educating the elite.

The elite in question looked pale. Bags shadowed his eyes. Up late playing some sort of interactive vid, probably. Hermione didn't have a lot of sympathy. She took a large bite out of her breakfast and said, "Ready to work?"

"It doesn't matter," Draco said. "Do whatever."

Great. At least before he'd been willing to play along. "Fine," she said. She threw herself down on one of the green chairs. "Can you order me up a little nail enamel, then?"

He stared at her. Hermione made a show of looking at her hands, turning them first one way, then the other. She'd never been the sort of girl who got manicures or made a fuss over a chipped nail but, even with a lifetime of general indifference to pretty hands, she could see hers were a disaster. She had callouses. Cuts. Her nails were torn and jagged. Well, she'd been working with her hands for two months. She couldn't be expected to look like some kind of society girl who never lifted anything heavier than a wine glass.

What she really wanted to demand was breakfast, but that wasn't in character. Didn't girls like this diet all the time or something? A real Groton-Rees would probably turn her time on the space station into a punchline for fancy parties. "But if you need a weight-loss program, it's the best one I've found." Everyone would laugh, then she'd take a sip from a glass of wine with more calories than some people had in a day.

It probably wasn't great to hate your cover story. Hermione still did.

Draco picked up one of Hermione's hands and turned it back and forth in his own. He ran a thumb over some of the hard spots work had created and frowned. "I see what you mean."

He waved a hand in the air, first right, then up and to the left. The gesture pulled up a translucent keyboard that hovered in front of him. He briskly tapped an incomprehensible series of commands into it. "I asked for a nail file too," he said after another wave cleared the air. "You need it."

"Thank you," Hermione said. The words came out a bit more tartly than she'd meant them too. She tried to soften them with a smile she hoped looked at least a little flirtatious.

Draco Malfoy sat down and stretched his legs out. His answering smile looked as forced as hers felt. "So, tell me about yourself," he said.

"What?" Hermione had memorized a biography of Miss Groton-Rees, society girl, but she suspected Draco didn't mean the schools she'd supposedly gone to, or what her parents did.

He shrugged. "You must do something besides tutor spacers."

"I read," she said. Books she could talk about at so much length she could keep the conversation going without accidentally revealing something she shouldn't.

"Oh, how exciting," he said with a twist to his mouth. The door dinged, and admitted one of the maids. She had a small tray with a bunch of implements Hermione didn't recognize on it, a nail file, and a small bottle of a deep red enamel. Draco took they tray and set it on a small table. "Maybe you can think of something else to talk about besides books."

"Like what?" Hermione picked up the nail file and began to work at her rough edges. She didn't know what most of those tools did, and if she tried to use them, all she'd do was reveal her ignorance. Filing, however, she could manage.

"You must do something else," Draco said. "No one reads all the time."

She did. She belonged to a group that was as close to anarchist revolutionaries as you were likely to find outside of a jail. She practiced hacking her way into computer systems and learned how explosives worked. Somehow, none of that seemed like a safe topic. "Not really," she said. "I doubt you want to hear about my social life."

"Boyfriends?" he asked.

"None to speak of." None at all, but that was too depressing to consider.

"Horses then."

"What?" She needed to take up nail care as a thing. She could file and smooth and open the little jar of paint, and it was all a completely natural thing to do. As long as she was doing this, it wasn't at all suspicious she wasn't making eye contact.

She did risk one glance up, and he was smiling at her. She'd been right when she thought it would transform his face. If he managed to look that charming at Hogwarts, he'd probably avoid getting his nose flattened no matter how many ignorant spacer options he had. "In my experience," he said, "rich girls either have a string of boyfriends, or they spend all their time with horses."

"Well," she said, "it's not like I ride competitively."

She didn't ride at all. Ginny rode. Ginny's parents had a ragged horse farm that managed to barely pay the taxes every year, and she'd taught herself to ride on a horse so mean she'd been flat out forbidden to go near him. That was Ginny, up for anything athletic. Hermione thought horses were large. And far too prone to start running for no apparent reason. And they had enormous feet that would hurt if they put one down on your hand.

"It still counts if you ride a lot, even if you aren't winning ribbons. Horse girls are horse girls, even if they just trot around on an old pony."

"That would be me," Hermione lied gamely.

"Every day?" he pressed.

She shrugged. "I mean, not every day but most, yes." She flashed him a rueful, somewhat embarrassed smile. At least, that was what she hoped it looked like. "I'd rather not talk about it, though. I'm not very good, and it's a bit of a sore point."

He shrugged, and slouched back again, whatever brief interest he'd had in her life seemingly extinguished. "If you say so," he said.

"Do you ride?" she asked. She carefully applied paint to one nail. She'd only done this a few time in her life, but how hard could it be?

Draco did ride. In fact, he did some fancy showjumping thing that involved fences and ditches, and the one thing he was looking forward to about Hogwarts was getting to ride daily. He would be allowed to stable his horse there. They had a competitive team, and he was hoping he'd make it. Hermione finished up her first hand while he was still going on, moved to paint the second, then looked at it. She was now going to have to use her non-dominant hand, with wet nails, to manage the fine-motor skill of painting the other side.

"Let me," Draco said. She gave him a skeptical glance. "I used to paint my girlfriend's nails. I won't make a mess of it."

She passed over the tiny brush, and he dipped it into the bottle, then stroked it over her nail with a steady and sure touch. "I'm sure I'll be awful at first," he said.

"At the nails?"

"On horseback," Draco corrected. "I haven't been planetside in almost a year. My hands are as soft as a girl's."

She raised her brows at him, and he smiled. "No offense."

He held her hand more firmly in his and painted a second nail. "Riding is funny," he said. "It looks like you're doing nothing, but you're working so hard."

"Thigh muscles," Hermione said with a laugh. Ginny talked about how you had to use your thighs a lot. That she could safely say.

"And it's hard on your hands," Draco said. "Mother is always on me to wear gloves, but I don't. You don't get as good a feel for the horse through gloves." His grin was conspiratorial. "I bet you don't either."

Ginny never did, so Hermione smiled back. "Not much, no."

Draco nodded. He painted the last nail, then put the tiny brush back in the bottle, screwed the lid shut, and held her hand with both of his. He leaned forward to blow on first one nail, then another. It was unbearably intimate, and Hermione wanted to pull her hand away. "How long were you down in the work bay before Mother found you?"

"Two months." It took no effort at all to sound bitter. Two long, miserable months.

Draco's voice was so low not a single sensor would have picked it up when he murmured, "You get a certain pattern of callouses when you ride. I've lost mine. It's been too long. A girl who rides every day her whole life would still have them after only two months."

Hermione yanked on her wrist, but Draco had it fast in his grasp. He leaned over the small table and put his lips at her ear. "How much are you lying about?"

She struggled to get her wrist free, but it was to no avail. "I'm not lying," she hissed. "My name is — "

"I bet if I run any kind of hard search on you, you're a paper trail with no body behind it." His breath was hot on her skin, and his words kept her in place far more thoroughly than even his hold on her hand. "You're much too confident about throwing that name around to have made it up, but you're no more a rich, horsey socialite than you're an innocent runaway snatched up by recruiters."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"How about I ask my mother to look into who you really are?"

A flare of panic reared up in Hermione. That would be bad. That would be so, so bad. What they'd do to a captured Order member could get so much worse than a lifetime of manual labor. The workers here got food. They got beds to sleep in. She'd heard horror stories of what happened inside corporate detention cells, and Voldemort was the worst of the worst. Her heart began to race, and she forced her self to meet his eyes. Nothing bad had happened yet. He might know something wasn't right, but he wasn't turning her in. She could work this. "What do you want?"

The smile that got her wasn't charming at all. He let go of her hand and leaned back, smug and pleased with himself. "Let's go for a walk," he said. "I'm sure in your unfortunate sojourn in the bay, you didn't get any time to enjoy nature, and the lower gardens are almost fully installed. They aren't technically open yet, but as long as you're with me, you'll be fine."

She wasn't in a position to say no, so Hermione didn't argue. Draco took her down a short lift ride, through a small foyer, then paused outside a pair of transparent doors. Lush trees and flowerbeds lined what appeared to be a brick pathway on the other side. "Selwyn Memorial Garden is not yet open," the system's voice announced.

Draco moved his hand through the air in a pattern too quick for Hermione's eyes to follow, though she certainly tried. "Malfoy family override," he said.

"Access granted," the voice said, and the doors slid open. Hermione drew in a deep breath. The work bays stank of human sweat and misery. Inadequate ventilation left the air stale at best. The Malfoy residence smelled of nothing at all. She hadn't realized until she inhaled humid air thick with the scent of flowers and soil how dead everything on this space station seemed.

Draco Malfoy watched that moment of vulnerability with a small smile at the edges of his mouth, but he didn't speak until the doors had closed behind them, sealing than in. "One of the nice things about this garden area it is that it isn't done yet," he said. A few feet into that space and Hermione could see he was telling the truth. Steel bones jutted out into the vast space, some half-covered with a faux Greek pillar skin, others still bare. A network of circulatory tubing dangled. Some of the flowerbeds were in full bloom, others didn't even have soil, and she could see the gleaming mesh that would serve as a drainage system. The effect was eerie. She wouldn't call it pleasant.

"At least the place is empty," she said.

Draco glanced down at her, and Hermione squirmed at the reminder of his height. It wasn't noticeable when they were seated, but he could loom over her if he wanted. He was looming now. "Yes," he said. "With the station construction schedule so far behind, all work has been diverted away from recreational areas to more urgent projects."

"Snatch a few more kids off the street, and I'm sure you'll get everything back on track," Hermione said. Any hope Draco would look ashamed - or perhaps surprised - was disappointed. All he did was shrug.

"There're plenty of things that need skilled engineers," he said. "Though I'll be sure to mention your suggestion to my father when I see him."

"You do that."

Draco sat down on a beautiful bench. It might have come from a historical photograph it was so old-fashioned, and Hermione admired the detailing. But, when she ran a finger over one green slat, the material itself had the smooth feel of high-end synthetic. Indestructible. Economical. It still looked incongruous next to the steel beam. She brushed a finger over one of the loose hoses and sat down. She'd manually inserted much smaller lines exactly like it, bent over on her knees as her back ached and DEs made comments about her arse.

"One of the things that hasn't gotten done yet in this garden is the surveillance system," Draco said.

Hermione snapped her head around at that. He smiled at her from his sharp, pointed face, and she wanted to slap the smug expression right off of it. Instead, she crossed her arms and said, "How interesting."

"You don't believe me," he said. It wasn't really a question. More of a statement.

"Would you? In my place?"

"Probably not," he admitted. He took a deep breath. "Perhaps a demonstration?"

Hermione shrugged.

"I hate Voldemort," he said.

Hermione involuntarily tensed, and her eyes turned to the glass doors. They surely weren't the only way into the garden, though. There had to be other exits. Service exits. This place wouldn't let gardeners and grunts in through the same door affluent visitors used. She waited for one of those unseen doors to burst open, for a team of DEs to appear.

Nothing happened.

She waited for Narcissa Malfoy to glide in, hands clasped in front of her and admonishment on her face. There were a lot of things a person high in the echelon of any given corporation could do, but one thing she knew was off-limits. It was what was sometimes euphemistically called a firing offense. You couldn't criticize the company. Not once. Not ever. Criticism was inviting not just your own death, but the death of your entire family. Corporate enforcers didn't mess around.

"You shouldn't say such things," she said. She didn't even like this boy, and she still shuddered at the knowledge of what could happen to him if anyone heard that. "You should go down to Hogwarts and get your fancy degrees and ride your ponies. When you're all done, you'll step into an office and be just like your father." Which wasn't a great future, and certainly not one she'd want, but it was better than dead.

Draco slumped on the bench and gave her an unreadable look. "It doesn't matter what degrees I get," he said. "That's all for show, anyway. Makes people think they have a chance."

"Oh?"

"What really matters is what services you render to Voldemort," he said. "How loyal you are. How loyal your parents are." The last bit sounded bleak. Beyond bleak. He sounded as despairing as his mother had the night before.

"Maybe you shouldn't go around announcing your true feelings about the company," Hermione said.

"I never said they were my true feelings," Draco said rapidly. "I needed a way to show you that no one was eavesdropping, and that seemed like a good one."

"What do you want?" Hermione asked with a sigh. She wasn't sure she believed no one was listening, but it was pretty clear he did. He wouldn't have risked everything by insulting the company if he hadn't. And no one had come rushing in, so if they were being recorded, maybe no one would review the logs until she was long gone. A thin hook to hang her life on, but here she was.

"Who are you?" he asked. Before Hermione could open her mouth, he added, "and I mean who are you really, not what pretty name do you have in the databases."

Hermione hadn't only studied explosives. She learned to weave truth and lies together. Give people a little bit of verifiable truth, and they would believe the lies, especially if there was no way to check them.

"My name is Hermione," she said. She let the words be slow as if they were getting pulled out of her begrudgingly. "Groton-Rees is a name we made up because I didn't have a last name I could remember."

"Runaway?"

"Abandoned, more likely," she said. It happened. People who couldn't feed all their children would abandon the youngest and weakest in hopes of saving the rest. It wasn't what had happened to her, but it was a plausible and unresearchable possibility.

"Well, you're alive," Draco said. "So someone must've taken you in."

She met his eyes. "Plenty of times, the person who takes a child like that is one of Voldemort's snatchers."

She wished he'd had the grace to look even slightly uncomfortable with that. He didn't. "Mudbloods," he said dismissively. God, he really was just awful.

"I, however," she said through gritted teeth, "was taken in by a group called Order of the Phoenix, and I was on my way to get a job as a temp at Grindelwald when your snatchers grabbed me up."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "I've heard of them," he said.

"Everyone's heard of them," Hermione said dryly. Grindelwald, Inc. was a major multinational corporation with several orbiting space stations. They'd petitioned the UN for nationhood status. A lot of smart people thought they'd probably get it.

"Not Grindelwald," Draco said with contempt. "I meant the Order."

Hermione smiled. A little bit of truth. A little bit of lying. Yes, I work for a group that is your company's enemy, that version of her story claimed, but I don't know anything about you. I am not at all concerned with you. My being here is a total accident. If asked, she could even spill an impressive number of Grindelwald corporate secrets to back up her claim she was targeting them, had researched them.

Some of those secrets were even true.

"Anarchists," he said.

"People committed to a free and democratic planet."

He snorted. "It's your commitment to freedom and democracy that leads you to blowing things up?"

Hermione shrugged. "No one consults me," she said, and that was certainly true enough. "They took me in, and without them, I have nothing."

Translation: I am not interested in discussing or defending the Order.

"Well no one consults me about Voldemort projects," Draco said. "But I've been handed one, and I need help getting it done."

Hermione waited.

"And you're going to help me, or I will tell my father who and what you are."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N - Thank you to caffienatedkiss and QuickHideTheRum for beta reading!**_


	4. Chapter 4

Hermione tried really hard not to smile. She tried not to smirk. She tried not to look pleased and smug and delighted because Draco Malfoy was so very, very pleased with the way he'd just backed her into what he assumed was a corner, and if she seemed happy about that, he might get suspicious.

"What sort of project?" she asked, projecting as much wariness into her voice as she could.

Draco eyed her with so much distrust she wanted to roll her eyes. This idiot wanted her help on his dumb corporate project but thought she was going to steal his secrets. "If you don't tell me what it is, I can't help you," she said.

"A transporter."

"What?" She had to be hearing that wrong.

"A transporter," he said again, this time with irritation. "You've heard of them, right? You step into a box in one place, step out in another. Well, we've had a prototype that doesn't work for years, and I need to get it going."

Hermione laughed. She actually laughed, and she could hear more than a tinge of hysteria in it. And only moments ago she'd thought his request would help her. God, that had been optimistic. It was only good for her if his project was a thing she could manage, or even pretend to manage. Instead, it was ridiculous. He was being set up to fail.

And now she knew what his aunt and mother had been talking about.

It was all sort of interesting.

"There's no way," Hermione said, watching to see how he'd react. "That's beyond advanced physics. When are you supposed to get this magical box functional?"

His reaction was a twisted mouth and bitter eyes. "By the end of the month."

"It's not possible," she said. How could anyone hate this boy so much to give him _that_ as an assignment? She certainly didn't like him very much, but that was ridiculous. Build a transporter device in a month. Why not ask him to turn a hedgehog into a pincushion while you were at it It'd have the same likelihood of success. "If you had a dozen years and a lab filled with the best minds, you'd still fail. What I'm good at is information. Finding information. Not engineering. Not quantum mechanics, or whatever the hell that needs."

"You'd better find a way," he said grimly. "Because if I get punished for not meeting corporate goals, you'll end up back in that work bay, and I'll make sure my mother wipes any record of any Hermione Groton-Rees from every system she can reach. Or I'll do it. Your Order friends won't be able to find you, much less rescue you."

Hermione got up and paced along the path. She sometimes could think better when she was moving, and there had to be a solution that would buy her enough time. "Data," she said.

"What?"

"I need access to data. All of it."

"You want open access to the Voldemort systems?"

She turned on her heel to smile at him. It was a cold, calculating smile, and he inched slightly away from her. She doubted he was aware he'd done it, but it gave her a sense of satisfaction. The bastard might think he was better than she was, and he might think he held all the cards, but some part of his brain was clever enough to be wary. "No," she said. "I want access to the Grindelwald systems, and the rest of your competitors too."

Those grey eyes began to widen. A little bit of hope crept into the corners. Not a lot, but she didn't need a lot. She had him.

"There's no way you can develop some kind of quantum travel system in a month," Hermione said. "That's one hundred percent not doable. But stealing someone else's solution? That we can do."

"We," he said.

"Welcome to teamwork," she said. "Get used to it. Spacer."

"How are _we_ going to manage this?"

"You ever logged on as your father?" she asked. Everyone she knew had, and if he claimed he didn't, he was either lying or the dullest boy alive. His nod was infinitesimal, but it was a nod. "Good," Hermione said. "Take me back to your schoolroom and get me a terminal — I like real keyboards when I'm working, none of that holographic crap — and log me on."

"The systems will log that he's signing in from my room," Draco said.

She held a hand out to him, and he grabbed it and pulled himself upward. "Only the first time," she said.

She continued to feel very pleased with her solution until Draco Malfoy led her right past his 'schoolroom' and into a space that was clearly more intimate. A terminal sat on a desk, yes, with the exact sort of real keyboard she liked. But across the room was a bed, one of the drawers fitted into the wall was partially open with a pair of pants hanging out, and she would bet anything that the second door opened to a private toilet. "Your room," she said flatly.

"I've disabled the monitors in here," he said. It was an explanation. She didn't like it. She didn't trust it. And she also didn't like being _in his bedroom_.

"I'm sure no one noticed that," she said, sarcasm dripping from her tone. "A broken monitor. How clever."

"It's feeding a loop of randomized unsuspicious activity into the logs, and even if I felt like hauling a physical terminal down to the garden, there's no connections." When she didn't say anything, he added, "I'm sure you've heard about the efficacy of Voldemort's biometric scanners."

She had. She'd been told it was as if Voldemort could read your mind. The systems took in your breathing. Your heart rate. Every one of your tiny gestures and tells. Then it put them all together into a series of statistical predictions. The longer you'd been monitored, the more accurate those predictions got. People claimed lying to Voldemort was instant death. She didn't believe that. She'd gotten in. Tricked Narcissa Malfoy. Landed herself right here in this room with a young prince of the company.

"Exaggerated, I'm sure," she said.

"Not by as much as you'd think." Draco pulled out a chair and pointed at it. "Get to work saving my arse."

Hermione wanted to tell him exactly where he could shove his attitude, but, as much as Draco Malfoy deserved a good dressing down, this was too golden a moment to risk on spite. She gestured at the keyboard. "Log me in, Malfoy."

She didn't bother watching what he typed. She'd know it soon enough. Once he'd let her in, she stole Lucius Malfoy's login, wiped the system's awareness it had ever happened, and switched the output display to lines of code. They scrolled by, almost too quickly to read, but she wasn't trying to read everything anyway. She was coasting by, looking for patterns and breaks in those patterns. Looking for weaknesses. Septima Vector had drilled her on arithmancy and coding until she could find the quirks every programmer had the same way a skilled baker could tell if someone used too much nutmeg. And the mind behind the Voldemort systems had a quirk here, and a weakness there, and she was setting records to copy onto a series of bits that would hitchhike rides on every message that went out, going only for the journey until they made it through planetside security, at which point they would route themselves first to the HR department of Sirius Records, then to an anonymous dropbox in the Caribbean, then to a collection spot the Order had set up.

It took her under ten minutes, but it was still long enough for Draco Malfoy to get impatient behind her. "I don't even understand what I'm looking at," he said peevishly about three minutes into her work. Line after line of Voldemort's code scrolled by and she typed far too quickly for anyone to follow. "What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for ways to get through corporate firewalls without getting caught," she said honestly enough. "If you want me to screw it up, keep distracting me."

He sat down on the edge of his bed after that. She could see him out of the corner of her eye. Blond. Pale. His hands clasped in front of him. He didn't talk, and she didn't acknowledge him again until she'd done everything she needed to for the Order. God, it was so easy when you had the right credentials. Now all she had to do was keep Draco Malfoy happy for a month.

Since she didn't have a login for Grindelwald, it was a bit trickier to finagle her way through their firewalls. Or not finagle, as the case turned out to be. She poked at one point, darted out of the way as it returned almost instant fire, and threw up a shield that would distract and diffuse the power their systems sent at her. The code fell apart almost as quickly as she typed. Vector had told her she relied too much on prepared subroutines, and the woman had been right. A second feint, this time trying to hitch a ride in on a packet destined for an in-house coffee shop was no more successful, and that time the pursuing routines chased her almost all the way back to Voldemort's. If she'd been planetside, she would have tried harder to throw them off, but she didn't really care if Grindelwald Inc. decided Lucius Malfoy's space station was trying to penetrate their security.

She left them tangled up in a mass of publicly available DE vids — werewolf porn, oddly enough — and cut her losses. This was going to take more than one try. She pushed her chair back and rubbed at her eyes. After that kind of rapid-fire data scanning, she always ended up feeling the strain.

"No luck, I take it?" Draco Malfoy's sneer brought her back to reality.

"It's not quite like sending an order out for groceries," she said. "I hope you didn't think I'd download specs for you to get to work building the thing tonight."

A pale flush climbed up his cheeks, and she realized that was exactly what he'd assumed. Or hoped for. "It's not that easy," she said.

"I see that."

God, she was hungry. Why hacking made her so hungry, she didn't know. Ron always told her it was because she was burning so many calories using her brain, which was ridiculous. Usually, she spent hours lost in the winding ribbons of logic that made up programs and all their endlessly shifting subroutines. It was like magic. You could change one tiny inflection over here, and watch the change spread out to infect an entire system. You could bring down a bank with the right hack. You could expose a senator's prostitute habit or, better yet, let him know you could unless he voted a specific way on one bill.

You could destroy a corporation.

She stood up. "I'm tired," she said. "And hungry. I need food and a break before I try again, so, if it's all right with you, I'll head back to my little cell, and you can do whatever it is rich boys do in their free time."

"Yeah."

Hermione moved to the door of his room and flashed her wrist cuff near the sensor pad. Nothing happened. She did it again. Still nothing.

Draco Malfoy closed his eyes for a moment, then stood up. He passed so close to her, his arm brushed against hers. "You aren't authorized to be in here," he said. "And I have this room shut off from the systems anyway. Door won't open for you."

"I see that." Next time she logged in, she was going to change the security systems not to see her. She'd make herself invisible so she could go anywhere.

She was mentally kicking herself for not having done it already when Draco Malfoy twisted mid-stride, grabbed her, muttered, "I"m sorry about this," then shoved his mouth against hers.

Hermione was about to put both hands on his throat, her knee in his testicles, and make him very, very sorry for his presumption when the door of his room slid open and Narcissa Malfoy stood, framed by the hallway.

Oh.

The hands she'd been planning to throttle Draco with went into his hair instead, and she curved her body against his. She'd noticed he was thin the first time she'd seen him. Station dwellers always were. What she hadn't realized was that under his expensive shirts, he was solid. His arms were wiry but strong as they wrapped around her back, and the stomach she was pressed against was the sort of thing she'd have wanted to explore in more detail if it had been anyone but him, any circumstance but this. She opened her mouth because one of the rules of improv in this sort of thing was you just went with it. Your partner in crime wanted to make it look like you were having an illicit moment? Make it more. Sell it to your audience.

His tongue brushed against hers, and she gasped at the contact. Then he twisted his head away, let her go, and glared at his mother.

Hermione stepped back and swiped at her dress as if embarrassed to have been caught. She expected Narcissa Malfoy to be shocked — to be _angry_ — that she'd caught her precious, spacer son kissing a mudblood. Instead, when Hermione glanced up at the woman, she had a faint smile playing around her mouth. "I'm so sorry," she said, sounding as if she never stooped to being sorry but was going to say the words anyway. "I had no idea you were busy. How nice that you two have become friends."

"Mother," Draco hissed. "What do you want?"

"I was going to tell you that your father and I will be having dinner with the board," Narcissa Malfoy said. Draco Malfoy's shoulders stiffened. "And that your presence will not be required."

"Lucky me."

If Narcissa was bothered by either the sarcasm or the tremble in his voice, she gave no sign of it. "You and young Miss Groton-Rees could have dinner in the front gallery. I would appreciate her opinion of the color scheme."

"I doubt Hermione has any opinions on your drapes," Draco snapped in a tone so rude Hermione wanted to cringe.

"Then perhaps she will enjoy the view." Narcissa swept away, and the door closed.

Draco ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "I don't usually fling myself at women quite so — "

"Abruptly?" Hermione suggested.

"An excellent word choice."

Hermione found a sharp smile that wasn't quite a forced grimace. "It's quite alright. I'll just head back now and get something to eat if you — "

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Draco said. "Mother told me to take you up to the gallery to eat, and that's exactly what I'll do."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"If you're going to be spending time in my room — which you will be — we need a reason. And I don't usually make girls I'm — "

"Kissing? Attacking? Threatening with a lifetime of forced labor?"

"Interested in," he plowed on, ignoring her, "eat whatever it is they feed the staff."

"Nutribars," she said. He'd watched her eat one the day before. He knew perfectly well what the staff ate.

He took her hand with the hint of a cajoling smile on her face. "Well, Hermione, I'm sure you'd rather have a decent lunch."

She would, but she didn't like the way he seemed to be taking this over, and that dislike kept her from doing more than narrowing her eyes at him and waiting for the catch.

"Roast beef," he said cajolingly. Her mouth watered against her will. She'd only had beef once or twice in her life. It was too expensive. Took too much water to raise. "Fresh lettuce," he went on. "Raised right here on the hydroponic levels." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. "Fresh bread."

"Oh, fine." She jerked her hand away. "Lunch."

He smiled. "It's a date."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - ****_Thank you to caffienatedkiss for beta reading!_**


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione expected this gallery to be some sort of restaurant. If so, it was like none she'd ever seen. A line of windows looked out into the depths of space. She could see the constant pinpricks of stars bisected by rapid darts of shuttles and satellites. Deep blue walls and dim lighting made the room itself seem like an extension of the world outside the station. Hermione was grateful she didn't have agoraphobia, but she still set a wary hand on a dark wooden rail that lined the sloping path down into the womb of this particular beast.

"Mother's got a knack," Draco said wryly. Hermione couldn't tell whether her reaction pleased him or irritated him, and his next commented didn't enlighten. "I'll be sure to tell her you appreciate what she's done." He brushed past her and sank into one of a pair of thick, soft chairs set next to the windows.

Hermione settled cautiously into the other one where her hands fumbled for something to do. She'd been on dates before, of course. She and Ron had gone out once or twice. She'd never lacked for boys who wanted to take her to places and things. But those had all been ordinary. They'd gone to regular places. Affordable places. Not like this. A low table sat between the chairs with an individual lantern. She reached for it, feeling for a switch, and jerked back when the touch of her thumb to the base lit it.

A single flame danced inside the glass case, casting a dim, flickering light over the table. Surely it was an illusion, but she couldn't find any flaws in the work. No repeats. No obvious cycling. "Nice, isn't it," Draco asked. His voice seemed loud in the hushed room, and the unsteady light turned him into a monster that came in and out of view.

"Are we the only people here?" Hermione asked. She hadn't been able to tell when they walked in, and now that she was seated, she could see the gallery was designed so clever angles made it seem like you were alone. She still didn't know what to do with her hands. She set them on the arms of the chair, but that felt weird, so then she folded them in her lap, which seemed equally stiff and strange. Thirty minutes ago, she'd been in her element, flying through bright code and ruthlessly competent. Now she couldn't even find a graceful way to sit. She wanted to flee. The small, mocking smile on Draco's face didn't help. He was used to places like this, and he could tell she wasn't.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "Solitude, I mean."

"I suppose not." Hermione leaned back in the seat. It was so deep she ended up slouched and awkward and more uncomfortable than she had been before.

Draco swiped a hand across the table, then tapped rapidly on the menu that appeared. He didn't ask her what she wanted, just entered things in and dismissed the holographic screen as quickly as it had appeared. "So," he said when he was done.

"So."

"What do you think of the Station so far?"

Hermione tipped her head to the side and regarded him. It was a generic question. If he'd asked it of any other girl he brought here, it would have been bland and appropriate. Given she'd spent two months working in grim conditions in the bowels of the place, it seemed a particularly bad choice for her. He realized it as he met her eyes and grimaced. "Sorry," he said.

"What is this board meeting you're so pleased to escape?" she asked. One uncomfortable question deserved another and, besides, information like that could be valuable.

"Was it that obvious?" he asked.

It couldn't have been more obvious if he'd screamed it to the rafters, but all she said was, "I could tell."

"The chairman of the board — company founder, whole bit — is visiting," Draco said. His voice was very calm. Very neutral. He put a smile on his face that was not at all convincing. It bent and lied in the changing light. "He's a great man, really, but I find business meetings a bit dull."

"Here to inspect, is he?"

"He likes to keep his hand in."

"Well, lucky you, you get to have lunch with me instead."

"Dinner too," Draco said. His smile inched up into something almost real. "I'm sure we'll be spending a lot of time together until I leave."

"Until we both leave," Hermione said pointedly. He really was a prick, and when she got back planetside, she was going to take a really long, really hot shower and wash the feel of his little smile off her skin. The waitress chose that moment to glide out of the darkness and set plates and glasses on the table. Hermione thanked her. Draco, she noticed, did not.

At least she had something to do with her hands now. The sandwich was thick, and he hadn't been kidding about the roast beef. Hermione took a small bite, then a larger one. It was hard not to wolf the thing down as quickly as she could. Even planetside, this would have been a treat to remember. After two months of nothing but nutribars, it could have been a window into divinity.

Draco watched her eat. His own food sat almost untouched, but that smile played along his mouth. "You shouldn't look so pleased, " he said. "Not if you want people to really believe you're as rich as you say."

"There's rich, and there's rich," she said. The Malfoys were a level beyond anything she'd imagined. They lived like no one she'd ever heard of, and it wasn't as if the Order didn't have a few wealthy backers. "And this is wonderful."

"I'm glad you like it," he said. He picked up his glass and took a sip. She followed suit and was mostly unsurprised to discover the thick tumbler was filled with wine rather than water.

"Nice," she said and took another sip. She might as well treat this like a real date rather than the weird show it was in truth. If nothing else, it would be a better idea to perform for the cameras. "What do you do, Draco Malfoy?"

"Do?"

"When you're not complaining about having to go to school with the peasants," she said. She made the tone as teasing as she could, and curled one foot up on her giant seat. That finally made it manageable. "You must do something for fun. Do you really ride?"

His eyes lingered on her for a moment too long. "I do ride," he said.

"Are you any good?"

"I'm not sure you know how you sound."

"On horseback," she said, but she knew she blushed a bit. Double entendres weren't her style. That had been unintentional. "Try to keep up."

He smiled again. "Not usually a problem for me." Her blush deepened. He brought this out in her, somehow. If they kept this up, by the time she finished the sandwich, she'd be quoting Sappho at him.

"I am good," he said, and it felt as if he were relenting a bit. Hermione took another bite of the amazing sandwich, savoring the rich taste, and let him talk. "It helps to have the right horses, of course. Father always made sure I had the best."

"Naturally."

The lantern turned his smug smile into a thing almost wistful. "I sometimes wonder if everyone lies to me, though. If I'm really just mediocre."

They probably did, and he probably was, but she didn't want to say that. It wouldn't be smart to antagonize him too much. A little push, sure, but too much was risky. She made a vague, encouraging sound. He shrugged and began to eat his lunch. Hermione tried to study him. This seemed like such a good opportunity to try to get a read on him. Spoilt. Sulky. Unlikeable. Frightened to his core of the company founder. Stronger than he seemed.

Not, as hard as it had been to assess with such a small sample, a terrible kisser.

Not terrible at all.

She finished her wine. Finished her sandwich. A satellite flashed by. It could have been a falling star, streaking along. "Make a wish," Draco said. She looked at him sharply, and he laughed, nothing but poised aristocrat again. "It's what one does, isn't it? On falling stars?"

It bothered her how closely he'd been able to track her thoughts, or, perhaps worse, they'd independently thought the same thing. She wasn't sure she liked having anything in common with this boy, not even a passing fancy.

"Or perhaps that's not what it looked like to you."

"No," she said, surprising herself with her own honesty. "It did."

"You can see more of them from that end of the room," Draco said, and, somehow, she was letting herself be taken by the hand and led past several tables — all empty — to a place where the wall curved in and it was just her, the vast empty universe, and the boy standing right behind her. She could feel him breathing, but he didn't wrap his arms around her or rest his head against her. He just stood there and breathed as they looked out. A second satellite went by, then another.

"Falling stars are supposed to be magic," he said. "Wish, and you'll get your heart's desire."

_To be home,_ Hermione thought. _To be safe. To do good in the world._

"I suppose your dream is to make the equestrian team," she said. She turned to glance up at him, but his face was completely in shadow as he answered.

"I hope you're better at research than you are at mind reading."

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco nixed her plan to go lie down in her room. "I'm obviously besotted by you," he said as he opened the door to his own. "I'm sure I'm righteously bothered a girl like you — like Miss Gorton-Rees — is being made to spend her day in some sort of garret."

"It's hardly a garret," Hermione said, but he had a point, so she didn't argue.

"Plus, having you here gives me more chances to snog your brains out," he said blandly.

She whipped her head around, and he laughed. "I'm joking," he said.

Which was rather insulting.

Her eyes still felt a bit strained from earlier, but if she were in here, she might as well get to work. Hermione pulled out the chair at Draco's desk and settled down, preparing to call up the outer reaches of the Voldemort net so she could plan a foray outward. Draco set a hand on her shoulder. "What?"

"You said you needed food and to rest," he said. "You haven't had the rest yet."

Hermione looked around his room with a sarcastic tilt to her head. It was luxurious, but it was still a room on a space station which meant small. Bed. Desk. No place for a guest to stretch out. Unless he thought she planned to cuddle up with him on his bed, there was nothing.

He tilted his own head toward that bed and, when she didn't move, added, "Not with me."

Yet again, Hermione found herself irrationally insulted, but she did want to rest her brain before tackling Grindelwald's systems again, so she took him up on the invitation. The bed was comfortable. Not one of the hard, foam mattresses she'd endured in the work dormitory. She didn't sink into it, exactly, but it was several steps above the floor.

Draco sat at her feet and began to pry one of her shoes off.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Getting your filthy slippers off my duvet." There was no threat in that, so she closed her eyes tried to will herself to relax. _You will find yourself in difficult situations_, Lupin had told them all. She'd liked his class. The time he spent on abstractions always tied back into the concrete lesson he wanted them to learn. Surviving life along the enemy was one of his repeated themes, and one of the lessons was to rest when you could. Hermione took a breath in, exhaled, and might have succeeded in relaxing if Draco had not picked that moment to take her foot in his hands, press both thumbs into the ball of said foot, and begin to rub.

"What are you doing now?"

"Generally, girls I've known like having their feet rubbed," Draco said.

"Yes, well I doubt I'm like many of your rich girlfriends," Hermione muttered, but she didn't tell him to stop.

"Fewer girlfriends than you might think," Draco said, his thumbs moving in slow semi-circles on her foot. "Being the heir to the many Malfoy responsibilities makes girls in the know run away."

Hermione did not find it in her soul to be especially sorry for him. Quite the opposite, really. She decided not to examine in any detail the pleasure his confession brought her.

"I suppose you have a history littered with broken hearts," Draco said into her silence.

Hermione let out a choked laugh at that. Hardly. The people who were attracted to her brains and drive ended up complaining she never stopped working, never relaxed to have a little fun. Ron had told her she was exhausting to be around.

"Does that inelegant sound mean no?"

"I did," Hermione said begrudgingly. "I ended a bit of a long-term relationship right before I started this job." The study, soothing pressure of his thumbs made it easy to talk, or perhaps it was that she didn't want him to feel quite so alone in his social failures.

"A cad I'm sure." Draco moved his attentions to her other foot.

Hermione felt perversely obligated to defend Ron. "No," she said. "Not a cad at all. Very smart. An excellent strategist. Far better than I am. And loyal to his friends. He can be a little hotheaded, but he always comes through in the end."

"A stellar guy. Clearly."

Hermione propped herself up on one elbow and looked at his sour face. "Are you jealous?" she asked. That possibility delighted her.

Draco let out a very pronounced snort. "Unlikely," he said. "Why would I be jealous of some indigent terrorist?"

"I don't know," Hermione said. "But you sound jealous."

"I've certainly got more money than he has," Draco said.

"Undoubtedly." Hermione was fairly sure Draco had more money than everyone she'd ever met put together.

"And I'm sure I ride better."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Ron's parents own a horse farm. Struggling, of course, but he's been on the back of one horse or another since he could stand up." She grinned. "I think that means you're tied."

Draco gave her a scowl that would have wilted any number of flowers. All it did to Hermione was make her grin broader. He really was jealous, the prat, and of someone he'd never met. Someone she wasn't even dating anymore.

"At least spare my ego a little, and tell me I'm the better kisser."

Hermione pushed herself to a fully seated position and twisted her feet out of his hands. This conversation had taken a turn she hadn't expected and wasn't sure she liked. "I think I'm rested enough," she said. "I'm going to start – "

"I don't see why you're so nervous," Draco said. "It's just a question. You did kiss him, didn't you?"

"Yes," Hermione said shortly. "Any number of times."

"And you kissed me earlier today."

"I'm not sure that counts," Hermione said. "It certainly didn't show you to especially good advantage."

"Then you have to let me try again," he said. When she stared at him, utterly nonplussed, he smiled and slid closer along his bed until his leg brushed against hers. "As you pointed out we're tied, he and I," Draco said. "One point each. Money for me, horses for him. You can't leave it there. You have to give me at least a chance to win."

"It's not a competition."

"Everything is a competition," Draco said. "And I really, really hate to fail."

_I've never seen anyone as afraid of failure as you are_. Hermione could hear Ron's voice in her memory. _You treat everything like a competition, like if you fail, you're going to die._

"Well," she said. "It wouldn't be fair not to give you a chance to prove yourself."

"And that is where I think we differ," Draco said, cupping one hand along the side of her face. "I always want to win, and I don't give a damn about being fair."

He'd kissed her earlier that day. It had been a fine kiss. Hardly extraordinary, but, especially given the circumstances, she'd been willing to grant he was good at this. Good enough, certainly.

It took only seconds for her to realize how much she'd underestimated him.

He brushed his lips against the side of her mouth then, as she turned toward them, thinking he'd missed, withdrew, so he was at the line of her jaw, then her neck. Each touch of his mouth was a whisper. A promise. A _hint_ of what was to come. "You have a scar," he said, brushing a finger over her neck.

"More than one." She was more breathless than she wanted to be. A thousand goose-pimples had sprung into being with that finger brush. No, a million. His light touch turned an imperfection into a mystery he wanted to unravel. He pressed his lips more firmly into that spot. His tongue darted out to lick at her skin, and she gasped. They weren't even kissing yet. He hadn't _touched _her lips. This was nothing like the quick grab and smother he'd done earlier. Nothing like wet and sloppy exchanges with Ron or Viktor. Nothing could have prepared her for this.

He was at the side of her mouth again and, finally — finally — his lips were on hers. Everything until that moment had been slow. Languid. She'd kept her hands in her lap. She'd been unmoving. Still.

It wasn't safe. It wasn't cautious. He was just making a point. He was insecure and jealous and wanted to be the best, and it was unclever to sag in arms that were suddenly around her. It was unclever to slide her hands under his shirt because she wanted to feel his skin against hers. Unclever to open her mouth. Unclever to kiss him back, and she was a clever girl and always had been, and none of that mattered because she was doing all those things. She was kissing him, and kissing him, and kissing him, and he was kissing her back. There was no other world than this. There were only his hands, only his mouth.

And then they were apart again. He'd pulled himself away and was looking at her with an unreadable smile on the lips that only a moment ago had been hers. "Do I win?" he asked very softly.

Hermione moved to his desk and bypassed the login with the shortcut she'd left for herself the last time. "I'm going to work," she said. "Try not to disturb me."

. . . . . . . . .

**A/N - ****_Thank you to caffienatedkiss and sulisaints for beta reading!_**


	6. Chapter 6

There was a flaw in the paneling above her bed. Hermione lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling and tried not to think. Each panel had nine sub-panels. Each of those had nine smaller divots. The one above her bed had been made incorrectly, and it only had seven. She'd been counting them over and over again for an hour.

Her probe into the defenses of Flamel Industries had proven reasonably successful. She'd bypassed security bots, subroutines, and one other hacker who'd recognized there was a human behind her more organic movements. At least, she assumed it had been another hacker. It could've been a security employee for Flamel who just didn't give a shit. That was more common than a lot of companies knew. Either way, they'd dodged one another and gone about their separate ways.

Flamel Industries had a variety of top-secret age-defying cosmetics and biotech products that promised immortality. What it didn't have was any research at all into quantum mechanics or teleportation.

"Every company we cross off the list brings us closer to finding one that has something," she said encouragingly when she logged off. Draco had stayed sitting on the edge of his bed, hands clasped, and watched her without speaking for the whole of her time online.

"It'll be Grindelwald," he said

He didn't say anything about their kiss, so she didn't either. She told him she was too tired to eat, and he had accepted the excuse without protest. It had been a lie, but it wasn't as if Wiltshire Station starved their staff. Hermione took three of the chocolate bars from the vending machine and ate them slowly as she counted her ceiling tiles and tried very hard not to remember the feel of his mouth on hers.

"Spoiled, selfish prick," she said, but the walls didn't answer. She picked up one of the chocolate bar wrappers and threw it. It was an ineffective missile and didn't ease any of her turmoil, but it did elicit a correction from the system.

"Trash must be placed in the appropriate bin," the voice said.

"Bugger off." Hermione made no move to get up.

"Trash must be placed in the appropriate bin," the voice said again.

Hermione continued to ignore it. Draco Malfoy had technique, She'd grant him that. He'd probably honed it on dozens of girls. More. He'd merely been making a point he was better than Ron – something he would never be, not in a million years, not even if Ron thought she was exhausting, no matter how good his kissing technique was – because in the end, Draco was still a –

A jolt of pain fired through her arm, and Hermione let out a sudden sharp gasp. The pain was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving barely an echo behind, but it had hurt in the same, sharp way stubbing a toe hurt. It wasn't as bad as the wands the DEs used, but that didn't mean it wasn't horrible.

"Trash must be placed in the appropriate bin," the system's voice said. Hermione couldn't even tell where the speaker was, or where the cameras were tracking her movements.

She pulled herself off the bed, picked up the offending wrapper, and deposited it down a slot in the wall that had been neatly marked with an icon of an antiquated trash bin. "Happy?" Hermione demanded of the unseen watcher, but now that she had complied with directives, Voldemort had no more interest in her. She didn't get a response.

Seven divots in the one tile. Hermione stared at it until her eyes closed and she slept.

She woke to a similar slap of pain. "Assigned rising time was five minutes previous," the system told her.

"This is unbelievable," Hermione muttered. She didn't have anywhere she needed to be, and even if she had, what was wrong with alarm bells? She wanted to stay lying on the bed out of sheer spite, but she swung her feet to the floor. No wonder that Astoria had looked so frightened. If every step out of line was rewarded with a jolt of nerve pain, it wouldn't take long for anyone to become wholly compliant and constantly afraid.

"Schedule for Hermione Groton-Rees, internal dating system month three, day five," the voice announced.

"Schedule?" Hermione asked it furiously. "I don't have a schedule."

The system ignored her. "Hermione Groton-Rees is assigned to Draco Malfoy's schoolroom. Arrival time, 10 minutes."

"Well, Draco Malfoy can go fuck himself," Hermione said. The words had no sooner left her mouth than she braced for another dose of pain. When it didn't come, she sagged and buried her face in her hands. She'd sent the data she'd come for to the Order. She'd succeeded. She'd done her job. She just needed to spend the next month keeping Narcissa Malfoy happy by teaching her son how not to get beat up, and keep the spoiled, miserable brat happy by trying to save his arse.

"Arrival time, 5 minutes. Warning."

Well, she had one lesson she was ready to impart to young Mr. Draco Malfoy this beautiful, early morning.

Hermione put her slippers on, walked out of the staff area, and made it to his schoolroom with one minute to spare.

"You're late," he said.

He looked pale and worn. The bags under his eyes had gotten visibly deeper already. Good. Let the little asshole with his kisses and his demands wallow in fear of whatever it was Voldemort planned to do to him if he didn't produce the impossible.

He ran his eyes over her wrinkled, white dress and sneered. "Did you even change clothes?"

Hermione crossed the few short steps to where he sat, a plate of eggs and what might have been real bacon in front of him. She looked down at him for a long moment, then slammed her elbow into the side of his jaw. He hadn't expected that, and he struggled to stay upright in his chair. "What the hell?" he demanded.

"Are you interested in how I know I'm not late?" Hermione asked.

"Not really," Draco said. "I'm interested - ."

"Too bad, because I'm going to tell you." Hermione pulled out the chair opposite him and helped herself to one of his slices of bacon. It was crisp, and rich, and the fat melted on her tongue. Fucking rich kid. She lifted her arm and held the metal cuff with the Voldemort branding imprinted on it in his face. "I assume you've seen one of these before," she said.

"Did something crawl into your breakfast nutribar and die?" he asked. "What's up your arse?"

"Well," Hermione said. "It turns out I had a work schedule today. Do you know anything about that?"

Draco shrugged. "I might've put something into the system."

"When I didn't get up at what the system considered the appropriate time, it flooded my nervous system with pain."

Draco looked blank.

Hermione gritted her teeth and went on. "After I woke to searing agony in my arm, your system informed me that I was due here in ten minutes. Then I got a five-minute warning. Call me completely cynical and bitter, but I'm pretty sure if I had been so much as a nanosecond late through that door, I would have gotten another blast."

He didn't say anything, but she could see his throat bob when he swallowed, and he looked away from her. "Is ignorance bliss?" Hermione asked. She snatched the fork out of his hand and slid his plate toward herself. "Give me that."

She'd eaten the rest of his eggs before he said anything. "You can't believe I would set you up like that."

"Funny," she said. "Because I recall you telling me if I didn't toe the line, you'd make sure all my records were deleted so I'd be stuck here until I died of overwork and malnutrition."

"But that was before," he began, then his jaw tightened. "Think what you want, mudblood. You've obviously made your mind up about me."

"Let us get on to your lessons, shall we?" Hermione said. "I believe we've already discussed how using the term mudblood is frowned on planetside."

"I don't see why it's that bad," Draco said. He crossed his arms and slumped down in his chair but made no effort to reclaim his plate. "Obviously I'm willing to be friends with mudbloods. It's just a description of where you're from."

"Well, it's not so bad people will refuse to say it, and it's not censored in news articles when some smug little spacer yells it out," Hermione granted. "It doesn't mean it wouldn't get you a fist in your face if you said it to the wrong person, or that it isn't rude."

"I'll try to remember that."

"You might also keep in mind that when someone with whom you are conversing tells you they don't like to be described using a particular turn of phrase, a person with manners immediately stops using that phrase even if they happen to think the restriction is absurd."

He flushed at that, which gave her a mean sense of satisfaction. _Yes, you arsehole. I mean you, and I mean what you keep calling me. _ "Or perhaps the idea that a person should use courtesy to make others comfortable and at ease wasn't something covered in your 'How to be a Malfoy' lessons."

"You're a really easy woman to dislike," Draco said.

"So let's move on to lesson two," Hermione said, ignoring the way his simple sentence settled in her stomach and curdled like bad milk. She didn't care what he thought of her.

"Lesson two," Draco said. "I'm all ears.

"Don't torture people who work for you," Hermione said. "It creates a sense of – how do I put this? – ill will."

"I'm sure it's not torture," Draco said.

"Well take this thing off my arm, put it on yours, and try sleeping in," Hermione said. "And, by the way, the use of nerve stimulating technology for the sole purpose of causing pain was explicitly classified as torture in the Lagos Accords of 2057."

"I can't take it off," Draco said.

"Can't or won't?"

His eyes flashed at that. "Why don't we just say won't. If you got up on time, it wouldn't be a problem."

Draco was saved from her answer by a maid in one of the interchangeable black and white outfits coming to take his plate away.

"Thank you," Hermione said. She glanced up and recognized the girl. "Astoria," she said, genuinely happy to see a familiar face who wasn't a Malfoy. "How are you?"

The girl's eyes flashed with something, but she ducked her chin and dropped a quick, nervous curtsy. The light flashed off the band on her wrist. She might be sitting at the table and Astoria might be clearing the dishes, but that wrist band was a reminder they were in the same boat.

"Astoria," Draco asked with a drawl. "Were you awakened this morning by a jab of nerve pain?"

Astoria's eyes flickered between Hermione and Draco. "No, sir," she said. "If I might go?"

Draco waved a hand dismissively and, plate in hand, Astoria fled. "God, I dodged a bullet there," Draco said sourly as she left.

"What?" Hermione didn't follow him.

"Voldemort Inc. invited the Greengrasses to sell their assets to us. They declined, so there was a hostile takeover. All the employees and owners work for us now."

"Don't see how that involves you dodging a bullet," Hermione said.

"Astoria was the youngest daughter of the chairman of the board," Draco said. "As part of the buyout, they were talking about marrying the two of us off. Create a shared interest between the companies, or something like that. Can you imagine?"

Hermione couldn't imagine living most of her life as a privileged, sheltered child, then being reduced to a chained servant in a competitor's employee because of decisions she'd had no part in. "No," she said. "I can't."

Draco caught her frown. "It's not like that," he said, clearly misunderstanding her ire. "We'd never even met.

"God, you're an arsehole," Hermione said. She stood up. "And yet I find I can't get enough of spending time alone with you. Let's go to your room."

They walked in silence. Hermione pulled up Draco's desk chair, clicked her way into the systems, then out into the world. Screw him, screw all of them. She was scrolling through code, almost lost in patterns of memory and data, when he spoke and yanked her out.

"I only wanted to let you know I still wanted to see you, despite everything."

Hermione pushed back from the display and focused her eyes on him. "Are you really that stupid?" she asked.

"I'm not exactly used to kissing girls and then having them turn away to program things," he said defensively.

He was. He really was that stupid, and Hermione was stuck with him for the next month. "Not about that," she hissed. "Do you even want me to succeed in finding this thing for you."

He looked perplexed.

"If you interrupt me at the wrong time," she said, "everything I'm working on here could fall apart."

"Oh."

Oh. _Oh. _Hermione could scream. He was asking her to break into corporate data flows, and he didn't even understand what that meant. Grindelwald's defenses were beyond good. They rivaled Voldemort's. And if she was going to tiptoe her way in past the lines of bots and subroutines and actual living, breathing people and start rifling through their things, she needed to convince everyone and everything looking her way that she belonged. Make a single mistake, and she could end up with every bit of her online self owned by a corporation. And they never went away. Not really. Get on their list, and they'd hunt you down years later. A single login that matched your patterns could result in a visit from a very discrete assassin. She couldn't focus on breaking in without getting everything that made her _her_ on the nets copied and distributed while also coddling some male ego.

"I didn't realize it would… do that," he said. His mouth tightened, and his shoulders hunched. "You don't understand."

He was the one who didn't understand. "You've never felt anything like that."

His laugh was hollow. "Yeah, sure. I work for Voldemort, and I've never felt pain."

She paused. "Malfoy?" she asked.

"It's nothing. Just… go back and do your research. I shouldn't have interrupted you."

She turned back to the display. It had kept scrolling without her, and she couldn't find where she had been. All of her thoughts had sped away, and she stared at the neatly ordered letters and punctuation, unable to make sense of any of it. She didn't want to think about Draco Malfoy, but he was there, invading her thoughts. He didn't know. He couldn't. He wasn't even sorry about poor Astoria, for god's sake. He lived his life in a bubble of unquestioned privilege, and he was everything she hated about the world. None of that changed that truth that if she wanted to get anything done, she'd have to find a way to push him out of her mind. Smoothing over his ruffled feathers would help, as much as he was an ignorant prick. She wasn't doing it for him. She was doing it because as things stood, she'd just go over and over their interactions, arguing with him in her head until she won. "Malfoy," she said.

"Find anything that can help me?"

"You really were quite good yesterday."

She flicked a glance over at him, and his face was no more open than it had been before. Now, though, the resentful chill had been replaced by a smug smile. Almost a sneer but not quite. "So that's two for me," he said.

"Indeed."

"And only one for your ex."

"I am so pleased you can count."

"I don't think you should be so hasty." He leaned back on his bed, comfortable again, and pleased with himself. "A proper researcher would need a larger sample size to come to any real conclusion about my talents."

"And you think I'm proper?" Hermione was smiling despite herself.

"I think you see the world as proper and improper." He cocked his brows up. "Good and bad."

"There are things that are right and things that are wrong," Hermione said, but she could feel the tension easing out of her shoulders. When she turned back to look at the display, her eyes could process the patterns again.

Draco Malfoy softly said, "It's not that simple," from his bed.

She waved a hand irritably at him, then couldn't do even that because a dozen or more of Grindelwald's defenses were coming at her at once. She threw up a scattered shield, then tried to race away, skittering past a satellite's weather output, then a weapon's manufacturer's financials, and while she was able to lose a few of them, they just kept coming.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - ****Thank you to caffienatedkiss, quickhidetherum, and sulisaints for beta reading!**


	7. Chapter 7

Draco ceased to matter as Hermione typed frantically, throwing off quick decoys that flared and buzzed and took the attention of some of Grindlewald's forces, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Bots and subroutines and if she didn't get this lot off her tail, a real person would amble by all too soon. Hermione threw a looping reference to an old picture of a yellow warbler at the hoard. The image code fragmented and reformed into a thousand electronic birds, and each one dove at one of the attackers, tangling code and overheating them so they burned out and fell back from the chase. Then, darting away, she threw what amounted to a fireball at them. It was overkill, unsubtle and a bad idea, and it should have destroyed them all, but more than half of the Grindelwald security bots kept coming, and she was writing code as quickly as her fingers could fly. She wasn't in the world. She was there, in the dead space of ideas and logic, streams of code passing in front of her eyes and translating into her brain so quickly it might have been magic, and in that world, she should have been unstoppable, but she wasn't. She'd never run into this many dedicated keep-out programs at one time, and she had to try something new.

Breathing out a silent apology to Flamel, she sped her way back through that firewall, leading Grindelwald right to their door, then duplicated herself into a thousand slightly different copies - thank god for random variations - and sent those thousand off each in a different direction. A thousand more, then more for good measure and as Grindelwald split itself up, each bot following one of the potential leads as it mutated and raced along a meaningless path to nothing, she backed herself up, erasing her own trail as she went. When she was sure she'd slipped away, a dull and unremarkable thing within the outer rim of Flamel, she attached her code to a packet headed for a fashion house, from there switched to a bit of pending public-transit legislation, and finally to an inter-library loan system, where she rode the backs of books zipping to and fro. No one followed her. Nothing popped up its ugly head and tried to grab her personal data.

She breathed out for what felt like the first time. She became aware that her arms ached, and her fingers had gone numb. Her back hurt and, as soon as she pushed the chair back from the workspace, her head began to pound with one hard jab after another right under her left eyebrow. She pushed her thumb into the spot to get a little relief. It didn't help enough. She was covered in sweat and stinking; she wanted a shower. Needed one.

She turned. Draco Malfoy was sitting on his own bed, and somehow she hadn't expected that. Lost in a world that barely existed, she'd forgotten he was there. It was hard to make her mind focus. She was Hermione Grange… Groton-Rees. Only he knew that was false. He didn't know her real name, though. That was good. She took an automatic step toward the door, raising her arm to swipe the band by the sensor. It didn't work, and she stared at it stupidly. Then her knees gave out from under her, and she staggered forward a step. She would have fallen — probably would have laid down on the floor where she collapsed and stayed there until everything stopped spinning — but arms caught her and dragged her over to a bed.

"What just happened?"

Hermione let out a small laugh. She could hear how ragged it sounded. Hell, she could feel its ragged edges. They scraped their way out of her throat, leaving bruises and blood in their wake. She'd had everything clenched down against the possibility — the probability — she'd well and truly buggered it. "Almost got caught," she said. She closed her eyes and tried not to think. Grindelwald didn't like torture. That's what people claimed, anyway. Cross them, and they'd kill without a second thought, but there was no policy of sadism. It could have been worse.

She rubbed the smooth weight of her wrist cuff against her leg as she shifted onto her side.

Arms tugged her up and against Draco Malfoy, and she should tell him she wasn't some sort of fragile doll that needed cuddling after a bad hack. And she would. As soon as she wasn't so tired. As soon as she wasn't shaking. He did something with one of his hands, waving it around in the air, and she didn't ask what for. Her forehead leaned against his chest, and she concentrated on breathing. Inhale. He smelled of soap and clean clothes. Exhale. Count to three. Inhale again. She missed a world that smelled good. All this recycled air might meet her need for oxygen, but it was flat. Dead. Empty. She would die if she stayed here too long. "I liked that garden," she said.

"I'm glad." His voice came to her from some far-away place. "It's one of my favorite spots on the station."

The door opened with a swoosh. "Just give it to me," she heard Draco say, and then there was the door again, and he was holding her upright with one arm, and his other hand held a mug.

"What is it?" she asked. _Don't eat food you can't trust_, had been one of Lupin's more useless bits of advice on surviving undercover. She couldn't trust any of the food, but taking something literally from the hand of this spacer prince seemed especially unwise.

"A stimulant," he said then, impatiently when she didn't immediately accept it, "I'm not trying to poison you."

She reached out her hands, too drained after the adrenaline surge from her battle with Grindelwald's forces to argue more. The mug was warm, and the drink inside sweet and hot and surprisingly good. Her first tentative sip became eager, and she drained the whole thing, ashamed of her greed but drinking it all anyway. Her hands didn't shake anymore when she passed the empty cup back to him, and the fog had lifted from her mind. "I hope that's not addictive," she said.

"Habit-forming," he said.

"Great."

She pulled herself away from him but stayed on his bed. An itch at the back of her mind told her she should thank him, which was a bit ridiculous. He was serving his own interests here. He needed her to fix his problem, and there was no way she would be doing that if she were passed out on the floor. Still, courtesy. "Thank you," she said. It came out more ungraciously than she wanted, but it was something at least.

"You're welcome." Draco paused, and Hermione waited for him to demand an explanation of what happened again. As if she'd be able to explain. Instead, he said, "I suppose you'll need to give it a rest for a bit."

"Yeah," she said. "Try again tomorrow."

He nodded. She expected he would tell her to get up. To go back to her own room. He didn't. He tucked himself up against the wall and pulled her toward him. It wasn't a demanding tug. More of an invitation, really, and she wasn't sure why he was bothering. He'd told her the cameras in here were on a loop, endlessly feeding safe lies into the system. He didn't need to perform his fake interest for any security DEs who might be monitoring him.

Still, no point in leaving. Hermione slid along the bed until she was next to him on the wall, then, surprised at herself, leaned against him. He was a miserable, spoiled brat. He was everything she hated. Everything she had spent her life trying to bring down in one way or another. But he was here, and he'd picked her up off the floor, and he smelled good. In a month, her fake parents would demand her safe return, and Narcissa Malfoy would send her planetside. With any luck, she'd find Draco Malfoy something near enough to what he wanted he'd be happy.

It wouldn't hurt anyone if she took advantage of what few comforts this station offered before she left.

"You were pretty intense there," Draco said. "I didn't know it could be so nerve-wracking to watch a person type."

She shrugged.

"I didn't even know most people like you still typed. Down in security…." He trailed off. Hermione knew what he meant. Most corporate security types used headsets that translated every twitch of their eyes and every half-formed movement of their lips to code. She'd tried one once. They were fine. Faster, that was certain. But riskier. Get your brain too close to the net, and you might end up as fried as one of the bots she'd scrambled with her attack birds. She preferred her brain intact.

"I like it better this way," she said.

He picked up her hand with his and ran a thumb over the rough spots on her palm. "They should have given you gloves," he said.

She looked at him, not sure what he meant.

"In the bays," he clarified. "When you were working there. They should have given you gloves."

"Can't reach your fingers into all those little pipes with gloves."

"That thinskin stuff would work."

Hermione snorted at the very idea. Thinskin. Voldemort was not about to buy top of the line protective gear for people they'd snatched off the streets. Draco's hand tightened on hers for a moment at her derisive sound. "They still should have done it," he said. "It's not right."

Hermione flicked a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He met it, and gave her a little, uncertain twitch of his lips that tried to be a smile, then tried to be a sneer. It finally lapsed into a sort of uncomfortable blankness. Probably the first time it had ever occurred to him that the workers laboring around him weren't treated particularly well. She should nudge that awareness along. Say something rousing that would blow on that tiny spark.

Before she could, he sagged down onto the bed, and a bit bemused but unsure what else to do, she followed. She didn't mean to snuggle up to him, but the bed was somewhat narrow, and they'd already been sitting together, so whatever her intentions had been, she ended up stretched out next to him, one leg pressed against his. He took one of her curls and wrapped it idly around one of his fingers, and they lay in silence as he twisted and untwisted the lock of hair until he said, "Tell me something about yourself."

She opened her mouth, ready to recite one of the many bits of Hermione Groton-Rees' backstory when he tugged on the curl hard enough to elicit a gasp. She kicked him in retaliation, though since she didn't have decent shoes on and had a bad angle, it barely counted as a glancing blow. He laughed and went back to playing with her hair without so much as a pause. "You lie for shite," he said. "_I ride horses." _The mimicry of her voice was dead on and cruel.

"I was good enough at it to get out of the bay," Hermione said. The urge to throw in his face all the data she'd stolen and sent down to the Order chewed at her, but she kept her mouth shut.

"Whatever," Draco said. "Tell me something true."

"Why?"

Another one of those long pauses stretched out as he toyed with her hair. Hermione shifted next to him, and he dropped one curl and picked up another before saying, "You're very open when you're working."

She pulled away to look at him at that, propping herself up on one elbow. She'd been called a lot of things, but 'open' had never been one of them. Workaholic. Driven. _Closed,_ Ron had said. _You dive into your work and shut the rest of us out. _Draco looked back at her, his fingers still tangled in her hair. If he was lying, she couldn't tell. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"You're just very focused," he said, and now that she was scrutinizing him, he sounded a little uncomfortable, but she still didn't see any trace of deceit on his face. "Very… raw. You aren't hiding anything."

"Great." That was what every spy wanted to hear.

He reached his other hand up to trace the line of her jaw. With any other boy, she'd have laughed and bent down to kiss him. The moment begged for it. But he wasn't Victor or Ron or any of the regular boys she'd known, so she held herself stiff until he dropped his hand and said, "It's weird to watch someone that intimately and know nothing about her. Tell me something. Anything. Your favorite sweet."

"My parents were dentists," she said. "I didn't get sweets as a child." That was a truth, sure enough. One that made it clear her whole background story was a lie. She waited for him to point that out. He didn't.

"Were?" he asked.

"Early-onset Alzheimers," she said. "Uncurable." They were still alive, but they barely knew one another, much less her. She'd stopped visiting when someone pointed out a connection to an Order member could only end badly for them. She hacked the cameras at their rest home sometimes. Less frequently lately. It hurt too much to see them.

"I'm sorry," Draco said.

"Well, you wanted something true," she said. She lay back down and stared up at his ceiling. It was smooth and curved, unlike the divoted ceiling of her cell. It was restful to stare up at it, trace her eyes along the sleek lines. She might have fallen asleep if Draco hadn't spoken.

"You're beautiful when you're working, you know."

That jolted her awake. She didn't know what game he was playing, but she didn't like it. "Yes," she said sarcastically. "I'm sure. Because there's nothing quite so hot as a girl staring at scrolling letters while she types."

"I'm not lying."

"Then you're delusional."

"You're focused," he said. The words were quiet. "Intense. So obviously very, very good at what you're doing."

"Most people mean things like a pretty face when they use the word _beautiful_," Hermione said. "I know I'm competent. I'm doing what you want. You don't need to oversell it."

"I'm not." It was his turn to prop himself up and look down at her. His blond hair hung forward. Spacer style was a bit longer than most people wore planetside. She liked it, but it would mark him as an outsider the moment he put a foot on the earth.

"You should cut that," she said, reaching a hand up to touch it. It was so thin and fine each stand seemed almost translucent. It was the hair of a ghost.

"You don't like it?"

"No," she said. "I do. It's just not the style."

"And you want me to be fashionable?" He grinned at her. "Ashamed to be seen with me this way?"

As if he would be giving her the time of day planetside. "I'm supposed to be teaching you to survive life among the peasants," she said. "You might not want everyone who sees you from across the room to know at once where you're from."

"But you like it this way," he pressed.

It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. She wasn't sure she'd ever met someone so vain, and she didn't see any reason to play along. "I mean, you've already told me you can tell when I'm lying," she said.

"_I ride horses," _he said in that damned copy of her voice again. "_Every day since I was five. My favorite pony is named Crookshanks, and she's thirteen hands_."

Hermione scowled.

"Do you even know what a hand is?" He was definitely teasing her now and having a grand time doing it.

"It's a measurement used for horses," she said shortly. She didn't like being teased by anyone. Not her friends. Not fellow Order members. Certainly not him. "And since you're so good at reading me, you should know I meant it when I said I liked your hair."

The mean grin melted off Draco's face replaced with something else far more opaque. "Yeah," he said. "I just wanted to hear you say it again."

"Too bad."

Before the argument — because that was clearly was it was about to become — could blossom and take root, he jumped up. "You seem to be feeling better," he said. "How about we go down to the garden since you like it so much."

"I'm hungry," Hermione said, "and I need a shower."

"I'll hose you off once we're there," he said, "and I'm a Malfoy. I can get lunch delivered anywhere I want."

"In that case."

He opened the door, and they went out into the luxurious private apartments of the Malfoy's and from there to the garden. They were in the lift when a hand caught the doors, and a woman stepped in. Draco's shoulders immediately tensed.

"Nephew," she said and leaned forward to brush lips against his cheek. The doors closed and the lift began its descent. "I would have thought you'd be working on your project."

"All work and no play," he said. The words were an automatic response, but his shoulders remained tight, and he'd shifted on his feet ever so slightly, putting himself somewhat between Hermione and the newcomer. Hermione studied her as discreetly as she could. Dark hair that sprang out from a sharp, thin face into a riot of curls. Women could spend a fortune on their hair and never turn it into this thick mane. Her lashes were equally lush. Draco had called her beautiful, but Hermione felt like a dirty child next to this woman. Her posture seemed sloppy next to that regal bearing. Her clothing was all too obviously the dress of a servant.

"Who's your friend?" the woman asked.

"Aunt Bella," Draco said. The words seemed dragged out of him. "This is Hermione. She's helping me with research for my, uh, project."

"Ma'am," Hermione said. She tugged at the edge of her dress and managed a small curtsey. This was the woman Draco's mother had begged for help to no avail.

"Hermione," Draco said. "This is my mother's oldest sister, Bellatrix Lestrange."

Hermione bobbed another curtsey and fastened her eyes on the floor at the woman's feet.

"What a charming little girl," Bellatrix said. Her tone was chilly, and Hermione felt like the rabbit in the sights of a hawk. "Remember not to fraternize, Draco."

"Part of her job is helping me learn planetside mores," Draco said. "Mother found her. Some fraternization will be required."

"I see." Bellatrix might see, but she clearly didn't approve. "Remember that should you not finish your work for Voldemort, you won't be going away to Hogwarts. Perhaps your mind should be focused on that rather than on how to mingle with mudbloods."

The lift stopped, and the doors opened to a gleaming black marble foyer. Several DEs stood, wands at the ready, as Bellatrix glanced out. "Ah, my stop," she said. "The work of the Board is never done, you know."

"Yes, Aunt," Draco said.

She patted his cheek. "You and your little friend have fun. Perhaps she can join the family for dinner one night."

"I really don't think that would be appropriate," Draco said.

Bellatrix Lestrange let out a pealing laugh that teetered on the edge of darkness. She took a step out of the lift, then turned back and waved her hand in the air in a quick, sharp movement. A flare of pain shot up Hermione's arm, and she gasped out in shock before falling to her knees. The pain repeated once, then again. It was a searing fire that danced along her nerves and sent a thousand tiny knives into her skin. The floor of the lift was cold under her, and another shock of pain pushed her all the way down. The computer system sent only the one stab of pain, and a person could recover from that. It was like stubbing your toe. Terrible, but over as soon as it began. Bellatrix was sending wave after wave at her, and she was lying on the hard floor, drowning in the stale air. Her eyes were at Draco's shoes, and the arm with the cuff jerked helplessly under one last jolt.

"Just a reminder of where you belong," Bellatrix said with satisfaction before the doors shut.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - Thank you to caffienatedkiss, quickhidetherum, and sulisaints for beta reading!**


	8. Chapter 8

Hermione lay on the floor, her cheek pressed into the cool metal, and tried to breathe. The doors of the lift shut with a neat ping and instantly Draco was down at her side. "Christ," he muttered. He helped her sit up or, rather, pulled her body up and held all her weight against him. "Come on, Hermione," he muttered. "Get up long enough to make it to the garden."

She didn't think she'd ever be able to stand on her own legs again but, somehow, one foot at a time planted itself, and she struggled upward. Draco hooked an arm under her, and by the time the lift came to a stop, she was as close to up as she could get. The lift opened, and Draco half-carried her to the garden doors.

"Selwyn Memorial Garden is not yet open," the system's voice announced.

"Malfoy family override." He was impatient. Angry. Nervous. Hermione wanted to tell him not to bother with any of that, but she couldn't find the energy to open her mouth.

"Access granted."

Draco swung her up into his arms as soon as they'd turned a path and were out of sight of the doors, then carried her the rest of the way to a bench secluded in the way back of the garden. It was lush. More of the plantings were done, and a full-sized weeping willow blocked this area from view. Moss grew over stones, and tall wildflowers that had never seen anything approaching the wild swayed in a breeze supplied by a convenient ventilation grate. Hermione didn't begin to cry until she was sitting. Then the tears came and with them great gasping sobs. She wanted to scream. She wanted to beat her fists against Malfoy until he was a broken, bloody mess at her feet. That had been his aunt. _His aunt_. It wasn't his fault, but she wanted it to be because he was right there and she could strike back at him.

Draco pulled her into a tight hug, his arms holding onto her, and she shook and shook and shook. She knew she should see a doctor after that. Not that it mattered. She didn't think demanding Narcissa Malfoy set her up with one would get very far. So, instead of getting medical treatment, she soaked Draco's shirt. Instead of pounding him into the ground with her rage and pain and, she let him hold on to her until she'd exhausted herself and was down to only sniffling.

Then he let her go, pulled an actual cloth handkerchief from a pocket, and passed it over. "For you," he said.

She wiped at her face and nose with it, trying to discretely rid herself of tears and mucus. Draco turned away and became suddenly fascinated with a hanging pot of flowers until, her clean up done, she nudged him with a foot. "What should I do with this?" she asked, holding the sodden handkerchief out. She appreciated the reusable nature of it, but it left her a little lost.

Draco's face contorted into a look of repulsion. "I don't want it back," he said. "Just bin it."

So much for reusable, but Hermione dropped the handkerchief in a nearby trash chute, tucked into a decorative column, and sat back down. She could stand again. Take a few steps. She could still taste the blood in her mouth from where she'd bitten her tongue during Bellatrix's reminder. The echoes of pain danced along her bones. But she was better. Better, and sitting with a member of the elite.

"So," she said. _What now_, she meant.

Draco picked her hand up and traced a tentative finger over the metal cuff. When he met her eyes, his face was anguished. "I didn't know," he said. "You have to believe me. When you said it… I assumed it was a little shock. Not like that's a great thing, but I didn't think it was…"

Hermione put a finger over his lips, and he stopped talking. He was probably relieved. What could a person say to what had happened? Nothing. "This is what it is," she said. "One if I don't get up on time. If I'm late. If I leave my authorized areas of the station, one at regular intervals until I return to my place."

"Authorized areas?" he asked.

Hermione shrugged. She didn't exactly feel like detailing that first excursion around his home, or the conversation she'd overheard while trying to recover from it.

"Why didn't you turn it off?"

That made her laugh. It's wasn't mirth. More like bitterness. It wasn't as if she hadn't considered disabling the thing, but one look at the way it worked within the station's systems and she knew she couldn't make it work. "Too complicated," she said. "It tracks every door I go through. Tracks what food I take in the staff quarters." It tracked her breathing and heart rate. If anyone cared to look, they'd know what just happened to her. They'd know what happened when she went exploring. She'd backed out as soon as she'd realized mimicking logs would be far too hard, and she couldn't disable the nerve stim function without making it all too obvious she'd done something.

Which was bloody great. It left her complicit in her own torture in order to maintain her cover. Mustn't let anyone figure out she could manipulate their systems, especially now that she was so neatly situated with a logon and a room with disabled monitors. She smiled a bit sourly. Her Order teachers hadn't ever mentioned this particular rock and hard place in their lectures.

She might have made a different decision if she'd realized things would go from a zap here and a zap there to full-on sadism.

"I'm so sorry," Draco said. He played with her fingers, tracing his own in and around the splay of her hand. It was soothing, and Hermione could feel another bout aftershock tears coming on. She clenched her jaw to keep it inside. Bad enough to break down and sob all over him once. Twice she wasn't going to allow.

"Your aunt is…."

"Very loyal to Voldemort," Draco said, finishing her statement. Hermione let out a hoarse laugh. That was certainly a politically safe thing to say. Not the bravest stance she'd ever heard, though. He flushed as if he could follow her thoughts and added almost under his breath, "It's better when she's not around."

"She's here for this board meeting?" Hermione guessed.

"Yeah." Draco dropped her hand and stood up. "I met with the board right after you arrived."

"I arrived here two months ago."

"Right after mother found you, I mean."

Hermione took the few steps to where Draco stood, his arms crossed and shoulders braced. He faced into a shallow nook of shrubbery and flowers designed to give the illusion of more space than really existed as if the winged statue of the Greek furies, their wings spread, was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. She put a hand on his arm, and he flinched before saying, "Obviously, if I'm demanding you help me, I can't let anything like that happen to you again."

"It wasn't your fault," Hermione said.

"What did you say over breakfast?" he asked, going on as if she hadn't spoken. "That I shouldn't torture my employees? It makes them hostile?"

"Well, you shouldn't kiss them either," Hermione said. She ran her hand down his arm, letting her thumb trace the curve of hard muscle hidden by his shirt. She hadn't seen him do it, but he obviously found time to exercise. "You're not very good at employment."

"Says the terrorist." Draco turned, and Hermione frowned at the implacably grim look on his face. "If you're with me, I can override any system calls on that thing." He tapped her cuff, and Hermione began to inch away.

"It'll be fine," she said. "I'll just go back to my room, rest up, then get to work — ."

"No," he said. "You going to have to stay with me."

It was so final — so _bossy_ — she stared at him in shock. People didn't tell her what to do. She told other people what to do. She was _managing_. It was a fault her friends pointed out all the time. And, besides, the last thing she needed complicating this month was Draco Malfoy deciding to go gallant on her. "What?" she asked, trying to gather her scattered wits into something she could marshall against whatever absurd plan he was concocting.

"You needed rest after this morning," he said. "You needed that even before my aunt decided to get… and you need a break. You can't do that kind of mental work right now."

It was true enough, but that didn't mean Hermione's jaw didn't grind together at the way he said it. "I'll go lie down for a little while," she said through those gritted teeth. "And then I will be fine."

"You will eat lunch," Draco corrected her. "And then take a nap in my room. And then — maybe — get back to work. If I think you're up to it."

That was outrageous. Beyond outrageous. She wasn't a child. She was a full member of the Order. He himself had said she was obviously competent. She might be trapped on this station, she might need to keep him happy, but she was at the edge of her rope already today, and she wasn't going to take one more thing. It wasn't smart to antagonize him, but for a brief moment, she didn't care. She put both hands on Draco Malfoy's shoulders and gave a hard shove. He stumbled backward into a flower bed. The watering system chose that moment to kick on, and a steady rain began to fall. "Hah," Hermione said. The shocked look on his face as he got wetter and wetter was absolutely satisfying.

Draco reached a hand out. She was expecting a push, so when he grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward, she wasn't braced against it and almost fell into him. The water hit her face and soaked her clothes as she stood, held in place by his tight grip. "What's good for the gander," he said. "And you needed a shower."

"Not here," Hermione said. She pulled at her wrist, but she was still far too shaky and weak to free herself. Water streamed over her face, and she glared at him. "Let me go."

"You'd prefer my room?" Draco asked

"You _bastard_."

"'fraid not," he said, and his mouth twitched up into a smirk. "I look far too much like my father for my parentage to be in any doubt."

The whole morning had been unremittingly awful, and that smug, pleased, arrogant twitch of his lips was the last straw. It was probably more hysterics than actual mirth, but Hermione began to laugh.

Draco looked offended at first, then the smirk softened to a grin, and he was laughing too. He let go of her wrist, and, without warning, one of her knees buckled. He immediately tucked an arm around her waist in support, and the absurdity of his transition from bully to concerned drove Hermione into another peal of laughter even as the pair of them stood under the watering system, getting steadily wetter..

"It's not funny," Hermione said, right as the water shut off with a fussy little click.

"No," Draco agreed, though he still had a grin dancing on his mouth. He tried to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, but all that did was move water around. His hair was dripping in sodden, blond locks, His shirt was dripping. Water dripped off his nose. Hermione reached up and pushed some of his very wet hair behind one of his ears. He caught her hand, and for a moment she thought he was going to press it to his mouth, but he dropped it. "You aren't hurting any more, though."

She stopped for a moment, shocked, but he was right. Between the laughter and the real, wonderful water, she felt better than she had in days. In months.

_In years_, some treacherous part of her mind whispered, but she shut that down as quickly as she could.

She grabbed part of the hem of her dress and wrung it out. Water puddled onto the soil at her feet before disappearing. "How are we supposed to walk through the halls like this, though?"

Draco's grin shifted back into the mask of absolute arrogance. "How little you know," he said. "Wait here."

Hermione continued to try to wring her dress out as he strode around the curve in the path, dripping the whole way. She'd done what she could on the dress and started to work on her hair when he returned, plastic box held in his hands.

"What," she asked, "is that?"

"This," he said, putting it down on the bench, "is what money can do, my dearest Hermione. Something you know about, yes?"

She snorted. No need to twit her about her dishonest background. He pulled out dry clothes for himself, all black. All neatly folded. All, she was sure, expensive. Then he handed her a brown bag and said, "I assume this is yours. I asked for something that would be less… servanty."

"Servanty?" Hermione didn't care for that description, even if it fit her identical dresses perfectly.

"If you wanted to dress up like one of the maids instead, I'm sure we could ask for one of those."

She threw him a look then peered into the bag. He was being an arse, but it wasn't as if she wanted to stay wet. Whatever he'd had brought was probably fine.

It was more than fine.

Hermione caught her breath at the pile of pale green fabric. It looked like it might be real silk, or at least a very good fake. She didn't know enough to be able to tell the difference. She'd never owned anything so glorious. Nothing had even come close. "It's probably not my size," she said. She really wanted it to be her size, but that seemed impossible.

"The system fitted you with whatever it is workers wear in the bays," Draco pointed out, "And those dresses. Some file has your body scans, and my mother's staff is good with clothes."

Hermione supposed they would have to be. "Go away," she ordered and, for a wonder, he did, taking his own dry clothes and slipping back around the curve in the path to give her something like privacy. She shucked off the sodden, white dress. Whoever had packed this bag up had included a towel for her. They'd included new slippers, pants and a brasserie that fit better than any she'd owned before — something more than a little creepy and a thing Hermione decided not to spend too much time thinking about. The dress itself was a wonder. Skirts flowed around her ankles, and loose sleeves hung over her wrists, hiding the cuff. She'd never been the sort of girl who spent hours on hair and cosmetics, but right now she wanted a mirror at the very least.

A low whistle would have to do. She spun, instantly self-conscious. Draco Malfoy didn't bother hiding the way he raked his eyes over her, from the tips of her toes, over silk-skimmed hips, then resting for a moment too long on the swell of her breasts before meeting her gaze. "What?" she demanded.

"You finally look the part," was all he said, followed by "Let me put your hair up." He blotted her hair with the towel, then twisted it up with a single, neat motion and held it in place with some pin that must have been in the box. One lone trickle of water tried to escape down her neck, but he wiped it away before it could reach the silk. The errant, disagreeable part of her mind contemplated what it would be like to have him lick it, and Hermione crossed her arms to chase those thoughts off. They weren't welcome here.

"Same girlfriend as the one whose nails you painted?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"The one who taught you to do hair."

"I'm just clever," he said. "Try to remember that." He took her hand. "Time for lunch."

The box was still sitting on the bench, piles of wet things heaped on it. Draco followed her gaze. "Someone else will get it," he said impatiently. He tugged on her and, with one more backward glance, Hermione let him lead her back out of the garden. That was what it was like to be a Malfoy. Even with threats hanging over his head, he could walk carelessly away from things he didn't need or want anymore, certain that he didn't need to worry about them. Someone else would clean up after him. Her too, now. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

They passed a maid in a corridor on their way to lunch. Hermione wanted to flash her cuff. _I'm one of you_, she wanted to say as the girl lowered her gaze and hurried along, eager to get away from both of them. Once she was out of earshot, Hermione asked him, "Why so many human servants?"

"People are cheaper than robots," Draco said. "And more adaptable."

Well, that was chilling.

Draco swept her into the same dark room where they'd eaten the day before. It was just as dark. Just as hushed. Just as empty. Hermione walked to one of the windows looking out into the vastness of everything. It was so beautiful. So clear. Planetside, light pollution blocked the stars. Regular pollution too. "You'll miss this," she said.

"The food's not that good," Draco said. He was bent over a table, clicking in their order. Like the last time, he didn't ask what she wanted.

"Not the food," Hermione said. "The sky."

"I won't be planetside forever."

"You'll still miss it." Maybe she meant she would miss it, though it wasn't as if she'd spent very much of her time up here able to admire the view. Or maybe she'd miss the food he was so quick to disparage. It took almost no time at all for plates to appear, today loaded with small, flaked sections of…

"Fish?" she asked.

"You don't like fish?"

She'd never had it. The first tentative bite melted on her tongue. She could taste the butter, and Ginny's family — Ron's family — had grown enough herbs in their kitchen garden she could identify those as well, though she'd never had them combined quite like this. The meal came with a far more familiar helping of polenta and some fresh green beans, and she loved every bite. Draco watched her eat, filled her glass, and they sat in a silence that was almost comfortable. Not quite. Hermione wasn't sure she'd ever be truly at ease in any place this lavish, but at least the company felt less like a test she had to pass.

She'd barely put her fork down when the waitress appeared to whisk the plates away and replace them with fresh silverware and two slices of cake.

"What is this?" she asked.

"People do eat dessert planetside," Draco said rather dryly. "I assume you know what cake is."

"It's just — "

He picked up his fork and dug it deeply into his slice. "If you don't want yours, I'll eat both."

It was just that he was treating this like a date. It was just that he was treating this like a _real_ date, and not like a show he was putting on for his mother to explain her presence in his room. Hell, he'd told his aunt she was helping him. The woman had disliked a lot of things about Hermione's very existence, but she hadn't batted an eye at the idea he'd roped someone in to solve his problem. That was probably a point in his favor in Bellatrix's mind: the lesser orders were there to be used. This charade wasn't necessary anymore, which made all of his courtesies far more nerve-wracking. "You don't need to do this," Hermione said.

Draco reached his fork over and jabbed it into her cake. He held the bite of dark cake over the table for a long moment, and it seemed like a challenge. Hermione narrowed her eyes, then bent forward and licked the dessert off his fork.

It was rich and sweet and very, very chocolatey. She picked up her own fork, then hesitated. _I'll see your dare_, she thought. _And meet it with my own. _She held up a bite, cocked her head to the side, and waited. Draco met her gaze, bent forward, and ate the cake.

She was eating a second bite — this time from her own fork and her own plate — when he spoke again. "You have to stay in my room."

"What?"

"If you're in there, my personal override can turn off any system orders to your," he hesitated, but his eyes fell to the silver cuff obscured by the silk sleeve, and she knew what he meant.

"You have one bed." Hermione's hand had tightened around her fork. "I'll be fine."

"Or you won't," Draco said. "You're helping me. Let me help you."

"One bed," she said again.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not planning on groping you. I'm trying to keep you from being — "

He didn't say 'tortured.' Maybe he didn't want to voice that was what it was.

"Aunt Bella could send a shock to you as a wake-up present if she wanted," he said. "But I've got my room locked down against a lot of things. Including that."

Hermione ate another bite of cake. She already knew she was going to agree. It galled her to admit it, but it was a good offer. He was being nice, maybe for the first time in his miserable life, and she'd be a fool to turn down the chance to have 24-hour access to his terminal.

A door whooshed open, and she turned, expecting another waitress. Instead, a tall, blond man walked in. He had a cane in one hand, and even from where she was seated, Hermione could tell the knuckles closed around it were clenched with strain. He glanced their way, his eyes stopping for a moment on Draco, then continuing on.

She saw what Draco meant about the physical resemblance. It wasn't as obvious in the images she'd studied before getting snatched into this place, but Draco Malfoy was the spitting image of his father, Lucius.

"I really don't see what the problem is, Tom," Lucius was saying as a group of people pushed their way in behind him. He jerked his head almost imperceptibly to the side, and Draco set his fork down very quietly. "We've beaten back the monopoly concerns of the North American Conglomerate, and Asia is fast-tracking — "

"I beat back. I do not recall you being especially helpful, Luciusss." The sibilant voice sent a chill down Hermione's spine. Speech therapy could have fixed the speaker's slight speech impediment, but she suspected he liked it. He had to know it made him disconcerting in an era where everyone with wealth corrected every perceived flaw.

Draco pushed his chair back from the table and rose to his feet in almost slow motion. He held his hand out, and Hermione stood as quietly as she could. She followed him as he slipped along the edge of the room, away from the main door. The clever design kept them mostly out of sight, but she could still hear a manic giggle as Tom Riddle, head of Voldemort Inc, waited for Lucius Malfoy's response. So, Bellatrix Lestrange was part of their group.

"My lord," Lucius began.

"Your family is a disappointment, Luciusss. I do not like to be disappointed."

Draco pushed a concealed door open into more darkness and waited for Hermione to precede him before he shut it and they both breathed heavily.

A hand yanked a thick black curtain aside, and bright light from a utility area beat against Hermione's eyes. She squinted, so used to the dark restaurant she could barely see, and an angry voice hissed, "You are not allowed in this section, and you're not wanted here. Get out."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - Thank you to caffienatedkiss, quickhidetherum, and sulisaints for beta reading!**


	9. Chapter 9

The room was so bright to Hermione's eyes, but she squinted at the speaker. The little black dress with the white apron danced into focus first but knowing it was one of the maids didn't help much.

"I mean it," the girl said, and Hermione heard something that sounded like real hatred in her voice. "Bad enough I have to scurry and fetch for you people. I know you aren't supposed to be in here, and I know your mother would be horrified, so go back out to your cake and your life before I — "

"Astoria?" Hermione asked.

That got her a scathing look of her own. Astoria Greengrass raked her eyes up and down the green dress and curled her lip. "Someone's been promoted from help to whore, I see," she said.

"I'm not — " Hermione began.

"Really? Why not? It's nice work if you can get it."

"Look," Draco said, but both women turned on him. He raised his hands and, with a quick glance toward the ceiling, said. "Maybe we could have this conversation in my room?"

"I'm sorry," Astoria said, in a tone that made it very clear she was anything but. "Maybe you thought I would be interested in a similar position? Because I can assure you, I'd rather clean your filth up than get down on my knees and — "

"It's because his room is blocked off from surveillance," Hermione hissed in the girl's ear. Astoria snapped her head around. It was a risk. It was one hell of a risk, but Hermione wouldn't put it past her to shove them both right back out the door into the restaurant, and with Riddle and Bellatrix out there that couldn't end well. Not given the way Draco had carefully and quietly moved them out of the room as soon as his father's party had arrived.

And, to be honest, she wouldn't blame Astoria for doing it. In her place, Hermione would have shoved her almost fiancé out to face whatever price he'd pay for being in a room where important meetings were being held. She'd relish the chance. Draco Malfoy trying to escape the dining area? Then let's make sure he can't would have been her attitude.

Astoria's too, it looked like. God, this slim girl had to be holding so much rage inside her scurrying body and carefully bent head. Maybe it would be enough. Hermione put her mouth close to Astoria's ear and whispered a simple question. When she stepped back, Astoria Greengrass, former heiress, and current servant, had a smile on her face. It wasn't a nice smile. She turned to Draco, bobbed one of those curtsies, and said, "I'm sorry, sir. Did you say you needed something in your room tidied?"

"I, ah yes, I did," Draco said. He looked nervously as Hermione, who gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. She didn't think he was going to like this, but well, scope creep in plans happened, and he was going to have to cope.

It wasn't like he had that much of a choice.

Back in his room, Hermione flung herself into his desk chair and logged in. "What are you doing?" Astoria asked.

"Erasing any trace of you threatening the precious Malfoy heir," Hermione said. She lifted her cuffed wrist and waggled it in the air as her other hand kept pecking at keys. "Unless you feel like risking a security audit and getting to explore what this thing can do."

"It would have been worth it," Astoria said.

"Worth more to do the other," Hermione said. She found the recorded scene where Astoria called her a whore and added enough of an error that Draco's entire exit disappeared from view. Astoria walked by with a tray. A burble overlaid from the restaurant interrupted the moment, and then when the static cleared and Bellatrix vanished from sight, the gleaming white service area was empty again.

She didn't think anyone was likely to push too hard about what had happened if it meant getting close to 'Aunt Bella.'

"What other?" Draco asked.

"Taking down Voldemort, of course," Hermione said.

There was a long, long pause. Draco stared at her in what looked like dumb stultification while Astoria flung herself down onto his bed and stretched her legs out. Hermione counted her breaths, waiting for him to say something. Three, then five, then seven before he managed a choked, "What?"

"Your company," Astoria explained with malicious, cheerful helpfulness. "You know the one. They impoverished my entire family when we wouldn't sell out, then graciously offered employment?"

"I know what Voldemort is," Draco said in a strained voice.

"And you know what the Order is," Hermione said.

"Terrorists, my father generally said," was Astoria's input. "I used to disapprove, but I've become more open to the idea in the last few years."

"We're working for a democratic planet," Hermione said. She was really getting tired of the terrorist thing.

Astoria shrugged. "I don't care if you're working for the devil himself if taking these people down is part of the plan."

"We're not these people," Draco said.

"You are," Hermione said. She was surprised how bad she felt telling him this. "You're the bad guys."

"I'm just," he said, then stopped.

"They're threatening you," Hermione said. "If you can't do what any reasonable person would call impossible — "

"I know." It was a snap. He was cornered now, and Hermione knew cornered animals were the most dangerous, and in any other circumstance, she'd have backed off, given him time to process this. "What would you have done if your mother hadn't shoved me into your lap?"

"Found a way," he said.

"How?"

"I…"

He made the mistake of looking at Astoria for help. She raised her brows into a perfectly cultivated expression of distaste, and said, "I hope you aren't expecting me to tell you Voldemort would forgive you for your failures."

"It would have been fine," he whispered, but they all knew it wouldn't have.

Astoria went on relentlessly, "Would you enjoy spending a day finding out how the fortunate employees of Voldemort spent their days? Because it isn't eating cake and lounging about."

"And down in the bays, it's worse," Hermione said.

"Did anyone...?" Astoria asked, a sudden hint of concern in her voice. Hermione shook her head. "Good," Astoria said, relieved. "I know I called you… but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. And even if you really did decide to… I mean… I wouldn't judge. Not even if it's him. You do what you have to. It's just…." She tipped her head toward Draco, and Hermione nodded. She understood. Astoria had used what weapons came to hand, and she'd been an easy thing to grab. She would have done the same in Astoria's shoes.

"Did anyone what?" Draco asked sharply, looking from one woman to the other. Hermione wondered how much of that coded, feminine conversation he'd followed. Not much, she expected.

"The DEs have a reputation," Astoria said. "And no one really cares what happens to the women down there."

Hermione could see the moment Draco figured out what she meant. His face went from perplexed to furious. "I'll kill them," he said. He turned sharply to Hermione, "I can have them fired," he said. "Just because I dislike them. I don't need a reason. I've done it before. Tell me if anyone — "

"Or," Astoria said as if she were speaking to a dull child, "We could listen to what your girlfriend here has to say about taking down the whole thing."

"I'm not," Hermione said right as Draco snapped, "She's not." They both stopped and looked at one another.

"Right," said Astoria.

Draco moved to sit on his bed, looked at Astoria, and clearly thought better of it. He slid down to lean against the wall.

"Draco, how secure is this room, really?" Hermione asked.

"Why don't you check?"

She had, but she wanted to hear it from him, so she waited until he crossed his arms, thrust a sullen jaw out, and said, "Just because it didn't occur to me to hack into Grindelwald doesn't mean I don't know my way around a system."

"You said — "

"I know what I said," he snapped. "And, no, I can't follow what you're doing. But that doesn't mean I'm an idiot."

"Debatable," Astoria muttered. She eyed him. "Order us some of that cake you two were eating."

"How do you know what we were eating?"

"Servants always know everything," Astoria said. "It's one reason smart companies treat their lower-level staff well."

Unlike Voldemort, she might as well have said.

Draco pulled up one of the projected keyboards, typed in several commands, and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "There," he said. "Three slices of cake are on their way. Happy now?"

"I'm still waiting for reassurance," Hermione said.

"Like I said, check it yourself," Draco said. "Maybe I bungled it."

"Did he?" Astoria asked.

Hermione logged in and slid her way through the various safeguards Draco had put around his room for the third time. His work wasn't shoddy. In its own way, it was excellent. Derivative, and a bit too orderly. She could tell he'd learned programming the same way corporate security types did: in school. It made it easier to circumvent because it was predictable.

She'd been faulted for that more than once when she'd started out.

"No." Hermione turned back around. Draco looked smug at her admission, and Astoria relieved. "He did a good job. This whole room feeds false data to security, and the system reads get stymied. You can go out, so to speak, but nothing can get in."

Astoria held up her wrist cuff, question in her eyes.

"Not that I did it for those things," Draco said, "but, no, no one outside the room can reach those."

"So, spill it," Astoria said.

Hermione took a deep breath, glanced at Draco, and said, "This one asked me to help me with a project for Voldemort."

"Oh, goodie," said Astoria. "Doing what? Organizing the summer charity pony walk?"

"Not that you'll be able to help," Draco said, "but no. It's getting a prototype model of a teleportation system working."

Astoria rolled her eyes. "Look, asshole. If you don't want to tell me — "

"No," Hermione said. "It's really that."

Astoria's jaw snapped shut. "That's not possible," she said.

"Well, it better be," Draco said. "Or I'm dead."

She shook her head. "Grindelwald has one. Or that's what mummy always claimed after a few too many scotches. Said they'd been sitting on it for years because it wasn't commercially viable. But you'll never buy it from them."

Hermione could barely hide the grin. She'd been right. Right, damn it. All that security had been excessive. They had secrets under all the usual layers of corporate greed and abuse. Good ones. And she wanted them. "Who said anything about buying?"

The door chimed, Draco waved permission to enter, and a maid stood framed in the doorway, her eyes darting from Astoria to Draco. Astoria mouthed, "It's fine," and the other girl relaxed slightly.

"Your cake, sir," she said.

Draco, oblivious to the entire exchange, gestured vaguely toward the desk. "Just put it there."

The maid did, then darted out again lest she get sucked into whatever shenanigans had trapped Astoria. Hermione wanted to bare her own cuff again, wanted to make it clear where she stood on this class divide, but she just looked intently at the screen, pretending to be doing something instead of blankly watching unimportant code scroll by. Astoria got up, grabbed her own slice of cake, and sank a fork into it with immense satisfaction. After she licked the first bite clean, she said, "Sweets help you make friends."

"I don't need friends," Draco said.

"Oh," said Hermione. "You really do."

"Rumor is that his mum dragged you out of the gutter to teach his highness here how not to get beat up," Astoria said. "I see that's going well."

"Rumor didn't lie," Hermione said. "But — "

"It's clearly a bit more than that," Astoria said, still eating. "And, don't get me wrong, I'm not against stealing from Grindelwald. But Grindelwald didn't lock me into a five-year automatically renewing contract where I'm responsible for station to surface transport fees if I ever want to leave. Grindelwald hasn't spent three years training me to respond to shocks like a dog." Her voice was starting to go up. "Grindelwald isn't watching everything I do, waiting for a failure so it can hurt me again. So, when you really get down to it, I don't give a shit about Grindelwald."

"I — " Draco said.

"Or you," Astoria said. "The only good thing about the whole catastrophe that is my life is not having to marry you."

"I'm not that bad," he said, clearly stung.

Hermione got up. She wanted to pace. She wanted to work things out via movement, but Draco's room was hardly room enough to do that, and even with only three people it felt full. She stepped over his legs, turned around, and was face to face with the opposite wall all too soon. "Grindelwald has the thing," she said.

"That's what I heard," Astoria said. "But it won't do Voldemort any good. It's way too expensive to make to find a market."

"It doesn't need a market," Draco said. "I only need the one."

"I can get the plans," Hermione said, which might be a tad over-confident, but dwelling on that part of it wasn't helpful right now. "Draco, can you build the thing?"

"I can send specs for individual components to engineering," Draco said. "I'd want to put the final plug in myself — "

"So no one takes credit," Hermione said, following his logic. "Once Draco's off the hook, we all go to the surface, he goes off to Hogwarts, I go home — "

"And I go where?" Astoria asked. "And I'm still waiting for how this does anything other than give goodies to a company I hate."

Hermione smiled at her because this was the best part. "We can't take Voldemort down," she said softly. "We're, what, a mouse chewing at an electrical cord."

Astoria put down an empty plate, picked up a second slice of cake, and started to eat. Draco looked like he might object, but very quickly thought better of it. "Go on," she said.

"But Grindelwald, not a mouse."

Astoria's smile began to mirror her own. "And they will be so unhappy when Voldemort announces it's got a prototype."

"I doubt Voldemort will announce that," Draco interjected, looking more than a little nervous. "We don't usually — "

"Oh, I can guarantee they'll announce it," Hermione said. "Someone in PR will get a memo from someone in development. It'll be a series of work orders that wind their way through the whole organization and by the time it goes out, you'll be long gone into Hogwarts and blameless.

Astoria put the second plate down and picked up the third. "I haven't had anything other than nutribars and those chocolate nut things in three years," she said. "God, this is good."

"Three years?" Draco stared at her.

"You really don't know anything, do you?" Astoria asked. The question was clearly rhetorical, and he didn't answer, but after she swallowed another bite, she added, "Not that I did either."

"You're coming with me," Hermione half-asked. "When we leave?"

"Two years left on my contract," Astoria said, but there was a trace of hope in her voice. "and travel fees after that. Unless you can work magic, I'm not going anywhere but back to work."

"I can steal money for you," Hermione said softly.

"What am I going to spend it on," Astoria asked. "I'm already docked for the uniforms, and I'm not eager to get another one. Food and lodging are already deducted."

"They make us pay for the nutribars?" Hermione asked. She'd never bothered to look at her own account. She could make it read that she had more money than existed in all of creation. It didn't matter. Either Narcissa was going to send her home, or she wasn't. No imaginary number was going to change that.

"They make us pay for everything," Astoria said.

"Come home with me," Hermione said. "When I go. I'll make the files read you're supposed to be on the ship. I'll erase your contract. By the time they realize one more maid is gone, you'll be safe."

"Why?"

"You confirmed Grindelwald has what I want," Hermione said. "And you're going to help us whenever we need it."

Astoria nodded slowly. "I can do that," she said. She gave a longing look at the cake, then her face shut down again, her shoulders curved in just a little, and her eyes became afraid. She rubbed one thumb over the cuff on her wrist, probably unconsciously. "I"m off," she said. "You know how to summon me." When the door didn't open, she paused, stuck for a moment, then she let out a small laugh. "These really don't work in here."

Draco waved his hand through the air impatiently, and the door opened. "Maybe you could take the tray and all the plates back," he said. It wasn't really a question, and the look Astoria threw him was poisonous, but she gathered up the dishes and slipped out, the meek and broken thing once again.

"That wasn't nice," Hermione said once the door had shut.

"What?" Draco looked at her, genuinely confused.

"Ordering her to take the dishes back," Hermione said. She stopped and counted to five. "She could have shoved you right back out into that restaurant. Almost did."

"Well, you offered her a contract buyout," Draco said. "And for what? A few hints of information about something you'd basically already figured out?"

To save you, Hermione thought, looking at him. And I don't even know why I care.

"Can you order up some clothes for me that are less dressy," Hermione asked. "Something practical but less," she hesitated. "Servanty."

Draco grinned at her. "Since you're going to sleep here, you'll need — "

"Flannel pajamas," she said. "Nothing cute."

"Killjoy," he said, but he slid into his own desk chair and began shopping from the company store for her. Hermione lay down on his bed and was half-dozing when he suddenly said, "Shit."

"What?"

He read the message out loud, and every word made the knot in Hermione's stomach get tighter.

_Draco. There will be a small family dinner tomorrow. Bring Miss Groton-Rees so your father can meet her. I'm sure he'll be interested in her history and aspirations. Have her wear something appropriate. Not that green dress. Mother._

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - Thank you to caffienatedkiss, quickhidetherum, and sulisaints for beta reading!**

**I've gotten somewhat stuck in chapter 12. I have 10 & 11 done, so two more weeks of regular posting, and hopefully by then I'll have gotten the flow again.**


	10. Chapter 10

"It will be fine," Draco said, but the nervous hitch in his voice gave him away.

Hermione was fairly sure having dinner with his parents would be unpleasant but fine. His mother knew perfectly well she was helping Draco because of a threat. And she hadn't so much as batted an eye when she walked in on them kissing. His father, well, as far as Hermione could tell, Lucius Malfoy had bigger problems than whether his son was slumming it with the help.

Bellatrix Lestrange, however, she'd just as rather not sit down to dinner with.

Not that she'd have much of a choice in the matter.

"I should get to work," she said. When all else failed, work was a distraction. She could plunge into the pools of data and forget about everything else for a little while.

Draco's raised brows and half-sneer stopped her. "You _don't_ want me to work?" she asked. "It's your arse, after all."

"So far today you've been jolted awake, almost gotten caught by Grindelwald, been tortured by my aunt, been drenched in the garden, and narrowly escaped Tom Riddle and the board only to recruit my sort of ex-fiance to your terrorist group."

"Not terrorists."

"I think you need a break," Draco went on as if she hadn't spoken. She hated admitting he was right. Work was a lot safer than anything else she could think of at the moment. That didn't change the fact that — damn him — he was right.

"Got any suggestions for relaxing on this station of yours?" Hermione asked. She knew she sounded sullen and bitter. The gardens had been interrupted. Their lunch. She felt cooped up and tired, and she wanted to go home.

"A nap?"

That was not as good as home, but it would do. She pushed her shoes off — stupid little space station slippers — and stretched out on his neatly made bed and contemplated his summary of her day. Pain. Work. Failure. More pain. And now she'd be sleeping here. Life was just getting better and better. She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. She'd rest, then she'd get up, and she find _something_ he could use.

When she opened her eyes again, the room was dark save for a glowing, pale face propped up across the room. It took Hermione a moment to realize that was Draco Malfoy, she was in his room, and he must have turned the lights down for her. He was illuminated by a handheld casting a faint blue glow up onto those cheekbones and that pale hair. She shifted on the bed, and he looked up.

"What are you doing?" she asked. The words seemed loud in the almost silent room.

"Reading." Draco tapped on his handheld, and the light clicked off, leaving the room in utter darkness. "Research."

"On?"

"Hogwarts," he said. "The official information leaves more than a little unsaid, and I like knowing what I'm getting into."

"The best education out there," Hermione said. She sat up. "Or so I've been told."

"Where'd you go to school?"

"I went to - " she began, but he stopped her almost at once.

"Not the Groton-Rees story. Where did you _really _ go to school."

"It doesn't matter," she said. "The neighborhood primary." Where she'd been pushy and disliked and gotten into trouble when she'd been found deep inside the school's curriculum database. A flyer her parents had assumed was a mass mailing had led them to Minerva McGonagall, who'd recruited her right into the Order. _You have a special gift_, she'd said. _You can use it to add books you like more to the reading lists, or you can point it at more worthwhile targets._

There hadn't ever really been a question what she'd do.

"What do you want, anyway?" she asked him.

"Want?" he asked. He sounded almost amused.

"You must want something."

"To kiss you again?" he suggested. The words were teasing, pleasant, absolutely flirtatious, and an excellent mask. Hermione bristled for a moment before she stopped and smiled. It was impossible not to admire the skill behind the deflection. He hadn't said anything inappropriate, but he'd managed to rile her up she'd almost missed that he hadn't answered the question. Not really.

"Okay," she said. "But other than that. What do you want to study? What do you want to do? What do you want to be when you grow up?"

She could hear him move, then the room's glow eased slowly up into what any restaurant would call 'mood lighting.' It let her see the sardonic twist his mouth got when he said, "I'll be a Voldemort executive, of course. My father signed up, and he hasn't been shy about committing me to my glorious future with the company."

He sat next to her on the bed, one hand pushing down into the mattress, one slipping along her leg. "I was thinking we could order dinner delivered. Avoid the hallways for tonight."

Hermione very calmly picked his hand off her thigh. "What a good idea. Then I'll dive back in, see what I can do."

He leaned forward until his lips were at her neck. "What should we do in the meantime?"

She turned so her mouth was right at his. She could feel his skin against hers as she formed her deliberately breathy answer. "Well, you could tell me what you want from life."

He laughed and leaned back. "You're a persistent little thing, aren't you?"

"Personality flaw."

_"_Why do you care?"

"Why wouldn't I?" She picked his hand back up, slid her fingers through his, and marveled at how slender his fingers were. Pianists hands, maybe. "I'm assuming you don't plan to sleep on the floor tonight."

"Not really, no. It would look a little odd if my mother showed up and found us that way."

"It seems pretty ordinary to want to know something about you, then."

"I ride horses," he said. "I'm decent at programming, but nothing compared to you. I like cake. I'm rich. I'm the heir to more than you've ever imagined."

"I'd rather guessed that part."

"It's the most important bit."

"And what do you want to do with all of that."

His hand clenched down on hers hard enough to hurt. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Try to keep up, Miss Groton-Rees. I will be a part of the Voldemort organization because my father was. My feelings on the matter are irrelevant."

"Pretend you're my ex," she said. "Poor, clever, the world in front of you, and you get to make any choice you want."

"I'd rather not be your ex."

Hermione plowed doggedly onward. "What do you choose? If you could be anything?"

"I like chemistry," he said softly. "I would do advanced research work in pharmaceutical bio-agents. If I could."

"Then do it."

He let her hand go at that, and she expected him to get up and fling himself across the room so much energy coiled within him. Instead, he took a deep breath and cupped her face. "It's not that easy. Not when you're me."

She wanted to find a way to tell him it was exactly that easy, that he wasn't trapped, but she wasn't sure it wouldn't be a lie. Ron had been practically born into the Order. Harry's parents had been heroes in it in times past. Their feet had been set on paths that led away from shining stations like this one and all they encompassed long before either had known enough to make a choice. Not that anyone would choose differently, given the option. She just had to admit, even if it was only internally, that options might seem a lot harder to come by if Bellatrix Lestrange was in your family.

Then she wasn't thinking about options at all, because he was brushing a thumb over the line of her jaw, and saying, "I do wish you'd kiss me again."

She began to shake her head. Whatever was happening here, getting involved was a bad idea. He'd hand over the plans she'd steal for him and go off to Hogwarts, saved for a little while longer from his parents' bad decisions in joining Voldemort. She'd go back to the Order, shuck her assumed identity, and return to being Hermione Granger, bright, clever, bookish and so, so responsible.

So responsible she could be trusted with an espionage mission that sent her right into the heart of one of Voldemort's lairs.

So responsible she'd never, ever do anything as ridiculous and ill-conceived as getting involved with someone like Draco Malfoy.

So responsible, she managed to say, "This would be a bad idea," instead of just leaning in toward him and letting things happen as they would.

_"_Tomorrow at dinner, I'm sure my father will manage to mention that I'm a font of bad ideas." Draco Malfoy's breath was warm against her skin, and she knew he was waiting for her to tell him yes.

"You're everything I've fought against," she said, but she wasn't pulling away. She should. She _knew_ she should, but it was only a month. It would only be a fling. He was clever, and less of an arse than she'd have expected, given his background, and she wanted to see what all his sharp angles looked like without the long-sleeved shirts and well-made trousers.

"I assure you," Draco said, "freelance information experts from planetside aren't on the list of desirable recruits at the employment fairs."

"Expert?" she asked. She flicked her gaze from his mouth to his eyes.

"You know you are." The tiniest pull of his fingers against her face made it clear he wanted her to let the last inch between them fall away. "Hermione," he said.

"We're going to regret this," she said.

"We won't." It was the kind of promise no one could keep, but she wasn't going to argue. She wouldn't gain anything from pointing out the thousand heartbreaks this could lead to, at least for her. His lips brushed against hers, tentatively at first. Then, when she didn't pull away, the hand cupping her face slid into her hair and yanked her more tightly against him. The kiss became demanding and hungry. She didn't know what to do with her hands. They were on her lap, then his shoulders, then she wanted to feel his skin, and they were tugging his shirt free and sliding greedily along his back. He stiffened a bit at her touch, and she wondered suddenly whether that was too much. She'd never been this unsure with anyone. She'd never been this _on fire_ with anyone. She'd been told that, yes, passion clouded the mind and made fools of men. She'd read poetry on the subject. She'd always assumed it was exaggerated. She'd assumed it took the tepid pleasures she found kissing and fondling and even shagging her various partners and painted them with false, too bright colors.

No one wanted to read a poem about tepid, beige love affairs where everything was fine and unexceptional, so of course, they were all exaggerated. Poets were liars.

God, she'd been so, so wrong.

He toppled her over, or she drew him downward, she wasn't sure. Everything seemed to happen at once by mutual, unspoken agreement. His mouth was on her neck, leaving a trail of electricity behind every kiss, every bite. She was trying to pull his shirt off over his head, but it got caught with a neckline too small, and he had to stop and undo the first few buttons. "Don't choke me," he said, and she was laughing with him at the absurdity of how awkward getting the shirt off was, and her laugh was open and happy and delighted with everything until her eyes caught on his arm.

She stopped.

Draco caught his breath at her sudden silence. She touched the black ink etched into his skin. "What's this?" she asked stupidly, though she knew what it was. It was the same Mark all the DEs had on their arms. It was a brand that marked him as Corporate with a capital C. He'd never go anywhere without anyone who saw that knowing he belonged to Voldemort.

He sat up and reached for his shirt. He turned away from her and wouldn't meet her eyes, so she grabbed his chin and pulled him back to face her. "Draco?"

"You said I was everything you hated." He shrugged, and it should have been a gesture of arrogant unconcern, and maybe all by itself it was, but his grey eyes were miserable. His jaw trembled with the need to keep back tears. She could feel it under her hand. "Why did you think I went to all the trouble of blocking the systems from reaching this room?"

"I just thought you wanted your privacy." She kept searching his face, but he'd gotten even the tiniest of tremors under control, and if his eyes glittered too brightly in the dim light, the expression he'd put on for the world was nothing but contempt.

She didn't believe it.

She set a hand over the black snake and skull motif. "Did you want it?" she asked.

"I'm a Malfoy," he said. Sneered, really. "Working for Voldemort is nothing but glory, and when I've gotten that tranport box working, I'll be… I'll be — "

She put a finger over his mouth. He'd be just as trapped as he was right now. And it didn't matter because she was leaving and, once planetside, they'd never have any reason to run into one another. It wasn't as if she expected him to ring her up from Hogwarts. One thing she did wonder about, and she'd be unlikely to ever have the chance to ask again. "The system reads that thing, doesn't it?"

He nodded.

"The same as it does my cuff."

Another nod.

"Could you… would you have to… _can_ it be turned off?"

"I," he hesitated, then slowly set down the shirt he'd still had clutched in his hands. He eased himself back down to his bed, and Hermione followed, propping her head on one hand and watching him. Her eyes traced down one sharp angle, then across his mouth, then back up to where his grey eyes were half-hooded now. "Yes," he said. "It can be rendered inoperable, but — " He stopped.

"But what?"

"I wouldn't enjoy the process very much," he said.

Something told Hermione that was a significant understatement.

"Well," she said, "right now we're going to get that stupid thing built for you, and you'll go off to Hogwarts, and you'll try not to get beat up."

"I'll probably — "

"You will not," she said. She poked him on the chest. "I have been hired to teach you how to mingle with the peasants without having them turn on you, and if you go and get beaten up, your mother will find me and demand I refund what she's paying me."

"She's not paying you anything," Draco pointed out, but a tiny, rueful smile was trying to take over his mouth. "You're working for room and board."

"And I wouldn't put it past her to show up with a bill."

"She might." He ran a finger along the sleeve of the green dress she still had on. "This isn't going to be as easy to remove as my shirt was, is it?"

It was perfectly easy to remove. The only problem was, that would leave her in nothing but underthings.

Draco's fingers brushed against the inside of her arm, and all her nerve endings seemed to sit up and take notice.

Of course, one person's problem was another person's opportunity.

"You're a smart boy," Hermione said. "I'm sure you can figure it out if you try."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - Thank you to caffienatedkiss, quickhidetherum, and sulisaints for beta reading!**

I've gotten somewhat stuck in chapter 12. I have 11 done, so one more week of regular posting, and hopefully by then I'll have gotten the flow again.


	11. Chapter 11

Draco turned out to be just as smart as she'd suspected, and the afternoon passed in ways as delightful as they were frustrating. Hermione had a line in her mind that she wouldn't cross, not with this one. Not with someone clever and amusing and muscular in all the ways she liked but who would walk away from time spent with her without a backward glance. Draco Malfoy belonged to a glittering world of power and money where she would never fit. Where she didn't _want_ to fit.

And she didn't want her heart broken.

So they kissed, and they caressed, and there was gasping, and she was pretty sure he should have antiseptic sprayed on his back where she'd gouged him with her nails at one particularly intense moment, but his bits and her bits stayed resolutely apart. Eventually, they ended up with their feet tucked under them, Draco back in trousers, Hermione in a pair of pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt.

"Tell me something true," she said.

"You have — "

"About you," she said, smacking him on the thigh with one balled-up fist. "Not about me."

"Always the violent one," he said, but he picked her hand up, splayed her fingers out, and kissed her palm, so she knew he wasn't genuinely upset. That was good. Time spent in the Order and with the Weasley clan had left her casually rough with anyone she trusted, and she wasn't sure she could turn that off without shifting wholly into a persona. Hermione Groton-Rees was too refined to shove at her friends, assuming she had any. Hermione Granger rolled up papers and hit people on the heads with them.

"I'm scared of the dark," he said.

"Because of ghosts?"

"Because things can sneak up on you in the dark." His grin wobbled for a moment. "I like to see what's coming."

"That's fair." Hermione eyed him. "How good are you?"

"You should know." He kissed her palm again, and this time his tongue traced a circle on the sensitive skin, sending shivers through her.

"That wasn't what I meant." She tipped her head toward the keyboard he had. It wasn't the sort of thing most casual users wanted. Actual keys, how quaint. But he'd had it right there, out where it was easy to get too. He hadn't had to requisition it the way he had that green dress. "How good are you at hacking?"

He shrugged. "Not as good as you."

"Show me."

He looked surprised, then wary, but finally, he couldn't resist the chance to show off. He slid into his desk chair and held his fingers above the keyboard. "What should I do?"

Hermione already had a plan. She needed to give him a goal that wouldn't get him into any real trouble if he screwed it up, so that crossed most decently hardened targets off the list. But she knew of one. "Break into Sirius Records and get a vid shot of the CEO."

A quick in-house search got him the name. "Stubby Boardman?"

Hermione grinned. "That's the one."

She stood behind Draco's chair and watched him. He slid through the Sirius firewalls easily enough - though that was hardly a challenge. Then he spoofed the internal account of one of the executives and mailed an administrative assistant.

_Hey Patrice! I left my login info at home. You know my memory's a sieve these days and I'm supposed to join a meeting in five. Could you save my arse and send me my password?_

In under 30 seconds, she'd replied, and Hermione could feel her jaw drop open.

_You owe me. It's goldenlabpup64_

_I do owe you - thanks! _

And Draco logged in, pulled up the vid files he now had perfect, unrestricted access to, found an old feed of Sirius — aka Stubby — and copied it to a vacant storage site. From there, he routed it through five different anonymizers before opening it up in front of her. Hermione glared at Sirius' grinning face. "That was cheating," she said. "You didn't hack anything other than one email account, and that was — "

"Cheat to win," Draco said, spinning around in his chair.

"But — "

His cheeky grin was so utterly obnoxious Hermione balled her hands into fists. She'd wanted to see what he knew how to do — he'd blocked this room from his own corporate sensors, so he clearly wasn't inept — and he'd just wiggled around the entire test she'd thought was clever like some sort of snake. And now he was so, so pleased with himself. "Why break a lock if you can trick someone into opening the door for you?"

"But that's — "

"Effective?"

She had no answer to that because it _had_ been, but that it worked was infuriating. When she got back, she was going to tell Sirius he needed to fire that witch who'd gone around passing out security information just to be helpful. "Fine," she muttered. "But it was still cheating."

Draco shrugged, which gave her a certain grim satisfaction. He couldn't argue it was cheating, so she was right. "Want dinner?" he asked.

She did, and he did, and he ordered something with a few quick taps of his fingers before standing up and pressing his mouth into the side of her neck. "Now," he said, "weren't you teaching me how not to get beat up? It's a difficult thing to get straight. More lessons, maybe?"

"That wasn't lesson time," she said a bit more primly than she'd meant to. She didn't like the idea that she'd been hired — if one could call it that — to kiss him. Her affections weren't for sale.

"Ah," he said. "My mistake."

Hermione stood, far too stiffly. She didn't know what to say or what to do. She was about to step back, out of reach of his hands and his smiles, when he placed an almost chaste kiss on one cheek. "I always liked recess more, anyway."

"Like you've ever been to a real school."

"Even tutors give breaks."

"And you played on the swings?" She sounded cold and distant, but that was how the words were coming out. This was why she couldn't do the sort of social engineering he'd used to get data. No one was ever going to open a door because she asked prettily. She had to pick all the locks the hard way.

"No swings," Draco said softly. His hands reached down and took hers. "I didn't mean to offend."

"You didn't."

"I rather obviously did."

"It's fine."

He didn't argue with her. He sat down again and tipped his head to the side and regarded her with those grey eyes. "It seems fairly obvious that even if showering girls with affection would protect me from abuse, it's not a scalable solution. I can only kiss so many people before my precious, spacer lips chap, so why don't you tell me a few other things I can do to keep myself out of trouble once I'm there?"

"And earn my keep," she said.

"Fill the conversational void until dinner arrives."

She reached her fingers into her hair and tried to comb some of the curls into submission. Draco had a mirror, and even in the dim light, she could see she was a tousled mess. She wished she had some sort of hair tie. She'd have to get one before the fancy family dinner tomorrow night if she didn't want to look wildly out of control. "We've covered the mud blood thing," she said, stalling a bit to collect her thoughts.

"Yes," Draco said. "Consider the word banished from my vocabulary."

"Try not to imply you're better than other people," she said.

He quirked a brow up, and the awkward anger she'd felt at the implication she was trading a relationship — or the facsimile of one — for safety eased away into a much more comfortable irritation with spacers. "It's a thing you people do," she said.

The brow stayed up, and his lips tilted up too. "You people?" he asked.

"Spacers," Hermione said. She could feel herself floundering, which she hadn't expected. She was the right one here, and he wasn't. "Rich kids. People like you. You know what I mean."

"I don't, really," he said. "Maybe you could explain."

"Spacers always act like we're lucky they deign to come planetside." They walked around in packs, slender, untouched by the sun, and so, so much richer than anyone around them. They dropped money casually, getting the best of everything without a second thought. They bought themselves admission to schools, nice cars, and even senators the way ordinary people bought a new pair of trousers.

And they tipped badly.

"Say thank you when people in shops and such help you. And staff. Thank your staff."

"If I'm paying someone, why should I thank them for doing their job?"

"To keep other people who see you being a jackass from cornering you later and hitting you just for the pleasure of making your nose bleed?"

"A decent point."

The door tinged, saving them from future awkward conversation on how many people would probably want to bash him in the face. Draco waved an arm to open it. The girl on the other side wore one of the maid uniforms, but it wasn't Astoria. Hermione didn't know whether she was relieved or sorry she didn't recognize her. She settled down on the floor to eat, tucking her feet under her. This room didn't have enough chairs. Picnic style it would be.

"Just put it there," Draco said, pointing at his desk.

The maid bobbed what tried to be a curtsey, slid the tray with dinner down, and said, "If you'll just ring when you're ready to have it picked up, sir."

"I will," Draco said. The girl was almost back out the open door before he added, "Thank you."

She goggled at him, dropped another one of those bobbing curtsies, and disappeared.

"See," Draco said to Hermione as he lifted the cover off one of the dishes of food. "I can say thank you."

"I'm very impressed." She was more impressed by the food. His ongoing habit of ordering without consulting her was becoming increasingly annoying, but it was hard to object without sounding petty when what he handed her was a helping of a thick rice soup with chunks of sausage and real green vegetables. The maid had brought a plate stacked with cornbread and more of the endless wine. The Malfoy's apparently didn't believe in drinking water or juice with dinner. It was wine, wine, all the time wine.

Well, dipping a spoon into the dish and letting some of the sausage sit on her tongue, Hermione supposed they probably didn't need the vitamins in most juice supplements. Not if they were eating like this all the time.

"You like it?" Draco asked, sitting on the floor across from her.

"Even if I found you unbearable, I'd probably find a way to fake it for the food," Hermione said.

"But you don't?"

She looked at him.

"Find me unbearable," he added. The tilt of his mouth suggested arrogance and amusement. His eyes looked lonely. The combination made her feel guilty.

"No," she said. Admitted, maybe. She certainly should find him unbearable. She had not even twenty-four hours ago. "Not any more."

"Well, that's good, then." Draco took several large spoonfuls of his soup and chewed with perfect, silent manners before adding, "It would be strange to share the bed if you disliked me that much."

That was definitely more cheerful and trying to rile her up. Hermione refused to respond. She took a sip of the wine, spread butter on the cornbread, and ate with as much calm repose as she could muster while sitting cross-legged on the floor of a spacer's bedroom, drawers with all his pants behind her, the bed she'd be sleeping in before her.

"I've done a number of strange things," she said after she finished the break. "Sleeping with you doesn't rate."

"You'll have to tell me about them."

"No," she said. "I really won't."

"No pillow talk?"

"Not about that," she said. She eyed him. "You should tell me more about your life. I'm the boring, poor girl who doesn't really ride horses. How did you learn what very little you know about systems?"

"Still sore about the email trick?"

She was but having it pointed out made her scowl. That made him grin, which only made her scowl more. It hadn't been a real demonstration of his skills. Not _real_ skills. He'd used a trick. For all she knew, he could be quietly brilliant at this and be laughing at her the whole time she was working on his behalf.

Or, no. That wasn't true. He'd been too relieved at the idea she could steal for him. He wouldn't be able to break into Grindelwald without her. So he might be good, but he wasn't _that_ good. Not as good as she was. That thought made her far more cheerful, and the meal finished almost pleasantly, with Draco telling her stories about his childhood that were probably the sort of thing he hauled out for all sorts of girls, and cocktail parties too, but they were funny, and when he told her how a course of anti-malarial drugs at fourteen had left him convinced he was a ferret, she cried she laughed so hard.

"It was a very vivid dream," he said, his eyes sparkling. "And the dreams are a common side effect, but then when I woke up, I hallucinated that everything around me had gotten big and I decided that meant the dream had been real."

"What did your mother do?"

"Called the medic," Draco said. "Apparently, I wasn't willing to believe that being able to speak meant I couldn't be a ferret, and I was crying inconsolably that now I'd have to live in a cage on wood chips."

"How much do you remember? Really?"

"Not much," he admitted. "Flashes of things being huge, and trying to run off so no one would put me in a cage."

She laughed again, then yawned. It was the wine, surely. She wasn't used to drinking this much, and on top of everything else, it was too much.

"Since I'm boring you," Draco said, and she opened her mouth ready to protest it wasn't that at all, but he held a hand up. "Why don't you take the first shower, and I'll get all this cleared away?"

She wasn't going to argue. The water was decadently wet and hot, and she would have stood there for endless, wasteful hours, but she was so tired. She had a towel, and yet another pair of clean pajamas because when you were rich, you didn't have to wear things more than once, and when she opened the door of his private loo, he held out a hair tie. "I asked the girl who took the tray away what you would want for your hair," he said. "She suggested this."

Hermione took it. "Thank you."

Flabbergasted was an excellent word. So, she thought, was dumbstruck.

"Assuming you didn't use all the hot water, I'm going to have a turn now," he said. "I'll try not to wake you."

Somehow, the bed hadn't seemed quite as narrow when they'd been snogging one another's brains out. Now that she was sliding under the blanket, it seemed impossible they would be able to sleep without being far more intimate than she wanted to. Kissing was one thing. Sleeping pressed against someone another.

She closed her eyes and listened to the steady beat of the water hitting the sides of the shower stall. He was naked on the other side of that door. Naked and wet. Not that she hadn't seen rather a lot of him already, but a shower was different. She turned over, and the crack of light along the edge of the door made it clear he hadn't shut it all the way.

She rolled back over and resolutely closed her eyes. She would sleep this way. Sleep was necessary for optimal performance, and she was going to need every with she had for the dinner with his family tomorrow. Draco knowing about the Order was one thing. His mother — or, God forbid, his aunt — would be something else entirely.

That possibility drove sleep even further away.

The water turned off.

She held herself braced, expecting something. She didn't know what. Wasn't even sure she'd object, but Draco didn't try to cuddle her, or wrap an arm around her, or take what dumpy old Mrs. Weasley would have called _liberties_. He climbed into bed, turned his back to her, and said not a word.

The pressure of his body against hers felt soothing and, lulled by the sound of his breathing and the warmth of him, Hermione finally fell into a deeper sleep than she had in months.

She woke up, wholly unsure what time it was. The room was dark, and Draco was breathing beside her, but it could be noon for all she knew. Time on a space station was arbitrary anyway. Lights went on and off and work hours were scheduled to coincide with bright times because people needed solar rhythms or they wilted, like plants. There was no real time here, though. No days. No years. Only one heartbeat after another until you died.

On that cheery thought, Hermione slid carefully out of bed, climbing over Draco and not waking him. The terminal beckoned her, keyboard at the ready, her fingers flew, and she was in, slinking along the Voldemort data lines unobserved by either systems or fair-haired skylords.

Since Grindelwald's security systems were excellent, she wanted to set up a trail of checkpoints she could use to trap anything that came after her once she had the teleporter plans in her grasp. It wasn't the most exciting part of hacking. It was more like making sure you had clean socks then going to a magical ball. It was still important. She set up a mail router, designing it, so it looked like a school project that had inadvertently become useful. Overflow traffic started trickling in almost at once. In a day or two, it would be a legitimate, unquestioned part of the sprawling data infrastructure. It also had honeypots built into every level of checkpoints that looked for Grindelwald security codes and tangled them up in loops and denials.

That done, she created a small non-profit that advocated for soybean planting. Several Federalist party members unknowingly donated sums large enough to give it a budget and small enough it would stay an unremarkable tax shelter line item in their campaign budgets. She was amusing herself writing a Statement of Purpose when Draco stirred.

"What are you doing?"

"Making an escape route," she said.

He came to stand behind her, one hand on the back of her chair — his chair, really, she supposed — and he laughed when he read her manifesto. "Are you really suggesting that by inhibiting thyroid function, soybean products increase the needs for medical interventions and boost profits of the burgeoning mediplus system?"

She grinned as she typed. "It's all about increasing shareholder profits, baby."

"You've set up a front that advocates for a crop specifically because it makes people sick."

"Yep."

"No one will believe that's a thing."

She turned to look at him at that, incredulous. It was if he'd never read the Voldemort Inc. legal proposals, which very specifically called for a relaxation of employee safeguards and removal of labor safeguards any sort in exchange for the corporation providing stimulants to their workers "free of charge."

She wondered if the zaps with the cuff were considered 'stimulants' or an 'incentive program.' Probably.

"No one is going to look at it that closely," she said. She pulled up the subroutines she'd added that stuck to corporate security bots like glue and relentlessly asked for donations. She watched Draco's face as he scanned the lines. He reached a hand out at one point, visually tracing a logic loop, and his comprehension told her a lot more about his competence than his email trick with Sirius Records had. She'd been fancy because she'd been playing, and he was still able to follow it.

"You do one," she suggested and stood up. "It needs to let me pass through easily but distract and slow down anything following me from Grindelwald."

Draco slid in the chair. "No other criteria?"

She shook her head and waited to see what he'd do. More, waited to see _how_ he'd do it.

He worked more slowly than she did, but that was reasonable. She'd been throwing these things together for years, and he'd probably never had to create an entire entity out of whole cloth before. He set up a shell and started adding content, and her mouth began to tighten. _Wesley is our King_ it read, and went on with multiple verses of a rapidly animated cartoon with a red-haired boy trying to jump a horse over fences and hedges with increasingly humiliating failures at every chorus.

The damn thing was funny, too. It would probably end up with millions of visitors laughing at the hapless horseman.

"That's not — "

"I'm still working on it," he said. "Give me a moment."

She crossed her arms as he added a devilish trap that looked like an advertisement for wine but which sought out anything that visited the site with pursuit instructions buried in the code and tangled it up in poisonous knots. She was impressed, albeit unwillingly. The urge to say, _"_It's _Weasley_," was incredibly strong, but she held her tongue. Admitting she recognized that he was jabbing at her ex seemed like that might be losing whatever game it was he was playing.

"Do I get an A?" Draco asked when he finished and set his wretched little honey pot loose on the Net.

Hermione leaned over and clicked to pull up the current time. Station hour 3, minute 47. "I'm going back to sleep," Hermione said. "Maybe tomorrow we can spend more time on the not being a dick portion of why I'm here."

"But I'm good at the dicking."

She was not going to respond to that, so she went back to bed and pretended to sleep until the pretense was real.

* * *

**A/N - Thank you to quickhidetherum, and sulisaints as well as Dramione Critique Group for beta reading!**


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